


Between the Sinners and the Saints

by angel_deux



Series: The Sinner and the Saint [1]
Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, I love Elektra just so we're clear, Post-Season 2, i just live for the angst of matt/elektra on opposite sides of something
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-05
Updated: 2016-07-08
Packaged: 2018-06-06 13:44:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 45,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6756550
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angel_deux/pseuds/angel_deux
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A new villain with killer aim nearly takes Frank out, and he makes the call to go to Karen for help. Karen, who hasn't seen him in months, who has been wishing she could take back those words she said to him in the woods. She never thought she'd get the chance to repair what they both broke that night, so once he's back in her life, she's not going to let him disappear again so easily.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Maybe I'm the Idiot

**Author's Note:**

> Coming out of fanfic retirement to dive into the dumpster with yall. This is sort of a slowburn, Daredevil Season 3 sort of thing from Karen's perspective. I started writing it as soon as I finished Season 2 and never thought I'd post it, but after I ended up finishing the whole thing (at about 40,000 words for the first draft), I decided I might as well get it out there!

 

“Matt, I really don’t want to do this right now. Just…I need the number of your nurse friend.”

“She’s not really my friend anymore,” Matt says, voice dripping with concern even over the phone. “Are you okay?”

Karen’s got her fingertips pressed to her mouth, her blue eyes wide and her blonde hair hanging in her face as she turns over her shoulder to look at New York’s Most Wanted currently sprawled in the middle of her living room floor.

“I’m okay,” she says. Not technically a lie.

“I’m coming over.”

“No, no, no. I don’t want…I just need…”

“I’ll find Claire. She doesn’t work at the hospital anymore, but I know where she’ll be. But I’m coming too.”

“No, Matt, don’t…!” But he hangs up, and she drops her phone on the counter, where it skitters across the cheap laminate, loud and harsh in the otherwise silent room. “Shit!”

The clean back of one blood-slick hand pressed to her mouth, the other curling anxious fingers in her hair, heedless of the gory streaks she’s leaving, she turns again to look at Frank on the floor. He hasn’t moved since he fell there, moments after she let him in. And she doesn’t even have a box of _bandaids_ , and the last time she talked to him she said he was dead to her, so why the _fuck_ is he here?

She’s angry. She’s so, _so_ angry. And yet by the time Claire and Matt show up – Claire annoyed as hell at being roped into this again and Matt vaguely guilty as always – Frank’s got a pillow under his head, and most of the blood cleaned off his face, because she really is just _the_ softest person, and she hates that.

“Before we go in,” she says to them both, blocking them in the front hall. Her new place isn’t quite a palace, but it’s bigger than her last one and at least has a few interior walls – it’s enough to give her some control over the situation. “I’m guessing, Matt, that since Claire got the privilege of being allowed to know your big secret months before I did, that means she’s discreet. And I know _you_ can be discreet. But I want you to promise me that you won’t do anything stupid here. Just help me and then move on. And don’t _lecture_ me.”

“Like he’s ever gonna miss an opportunity for that,” Claire says with a snort.

“I don’t lecture,” Matt replies, sounding wounded, and now it’s Karen’s turn to snort as she leads the way into the room. Matt takes about half a second to forget how fucking offended he was at being called a lecturer. “Karen, what the hell is the matter with you?”

“Ha!” Claire barks, pulling on her purple latex gloves. “Wish I’d bet on it.” She looks at Karen, and her smile drops into a kind of exhausted professionalism. “Tell me what happened to him. What am I looking at here?”

“I don’t…I have no idea. He just knocked on my door. I haven’t seen him in months. I haven’t…and he’s…”

“Okay, that’s fine. I wasn’t expecting this to be easy anyway. Matt, do me a favor and stand by? I don’t want this guy trying to _punish_ me for sticking a needle in him.”

“Frank wouldn’t,” Karen says, not so much defensive as she is just…certain. Frank wouldn’t.

“Karen, you’ve seen what Frank can do.”

“Yeah, Matt. And so have you.”

They stare each other down for a minute, and he’s thinking of the boat and the warehouse with the meathooks, and she’s thinking of him on the rooftop saving Matt, and of his body shoving hers down into the carpet, and the diner, and the woods. Because what Frank does is fucking horrifying, but it’s also not _bad_. It’s not Hydra or Fisk or any of the gangsters who go around killing for turf and criminal enterprises. Frank is different. And he’s brutal and he’s mean and he’s _effective_ , and she wishes that Matt could understand that.

But Matt can’t. And part of that is why she loved Matt once and it all…honestly? All of this is just overwhelming, unfair bullshit.

“One of you throw the staring contest and help me out,” Claire says. She looks between them like she’s figured it all out already and is just hoping at this point that neither of them try to tell her about it.

It’s Karen who kneels down beside Claire and puts her fingers where directed. And it’s Matt who paces, running shaking fingers through too-long hair and looking almost as bad as Frank, bruises peppered across his face. She wants to ask and offer him some ice, but she doesn’t. That’s not them anymore, as much as she wishes it was.

Claire is a good nurse. Would probably make a good doctor. She has this impassive expression, a neutral kind of empathy. Karen’s always wearing her heart on her sleeve, so she immediately respects the hell out of this woman who can let one sympathetic quirk of a grimace lift the corner of her mouth but then tell Karen to press harder with the compress in an even, no-bullshit tone.

“Well, the good news is I can stop the bleeding,” she says once she has worked with Karen to open his skull-emblazoned bulletproof vest and then unceremoniously cut through the black t-shirt beneath. “He’s got a few busted ribs from the impacts of the shots, and this looks like a stab wound under the arm, but it doesn’t look too bad. Nothing major hit. He lost a _lot_ of blood, though. That’s probably why he passed out on you.”

“Please,” Karen says. “Just…do what you can. I know it’s asking a lot.”

“Yeah, well. It is what it is.”

She’s exhausted, and Karen knows how she feels. Knows that Claire has more than just two vigilantes in her life, too. Matt mentioned it once, about how she patches them up and puts them back on the street.

“Seems like there would be more than one nurse in New York who could do this,” she says, and Claire laughs. Ragged and honest.

“It would seem like that, wouldn’t it? Now hand me that needle.”

Frank wakes up suddenly, with a grunt that’s pain and anger and disorientation. Claire’s ready with a knife she pulls out of nowhere and flips open, but Karen angles herself between them, putting one hand down on Frank’s bloody chest, fingertips just lightly pressing against the skin over his heart.

“Frank, don’t move,” she says, and he doesn’t. Every muscle tenses, but it’s like her fingertips are Thor’s hammer, weighing him down, keeping him in place. He doesn’t push a millimeter towards her.

“Who is she?” he asks, voice hoarse and disused, his eyes never leaving Claire’s. Matt steps into view and Frank lets out a groan that makes Karen smile even though she’s still tearing up with anxiety and worry.

“She’s a friend,” Claire answers for herself. “And she’s the only nurse in the whole city of New York willing to secretly come out here in the middle of the night and keep you from bleeding out on Ms. Page’s floor. So you want to be a good boy? Lie back down and let me do my work.”

“She’s good, Frank,” Karen promises. “She helps people like you.”

“Criminals?” Frank wonders, and Claire’s eyebrows lower like she’s getting ready to fight.

“Vigilantes,” Karen says, and finally he looks at her, and she tries to smile. She reaches out with her other hand and takes his, delicately, in her own. He gives her a look like he thinks she’s rearing back to spit on him, but he doesn’t pull his hand away, and she’ll take a win where she can get one. “So please, Frank. Just trust me. I couldn’t do it on my own, so I called for help. She’s helping you. _Please_.”

The pause that stretches out as he searches her expression seems to last forever. She remembers what the Colonel said, back at the house: unnerving. It’s unnerving how he can see into a person. Matt, he can read their heartbeats and tiny, miniscule changes in breath, changes in movement, can tell when you’re lying. But with Frank, it feels like he’s looking straight into you. Straight into you and judging at every moment whether you’re worthy.

“Yes ma’am,” he finally says, softly, and Karen nearly sobs.

 

* * *

 

 “Well,” Claire says when she’s done, drying off her newly clean hands with Karen’s only dishtowel. “You’re not the worst patient I’ve ever had. But you need to rest. That gonna be a problem?”

“I can lie low,” Frank says. He still doesn’t trust her, still doesn’t smile, still looks a little like a caged animal waiting to be led to slaughter, but he’s sitting up now, propped against Karen’s couch, and he seems grateful.

“Those stitches will need to come out,” Claire warns.

“I can take ‘em out,” Frank replies, and Claire smirks a little at that.

“I bet you can,” she says, and it’s raw and appreciative enough that Karen has to hide a smile. “If that’s everything…”

“Thank you so much,” Karen says, and she goes to Claire and hugs her. The older woman seems surprised at first, but eventually returns the gesture, one hand rubbing calming circles on Karen’s back.

“Call me anytime,” she says sincerely, reluctantly, and she writes her number down on a sticky note before she goes. Karen clutches it, watches her walk out, and wishes she had asked Claire to stay because now it’s just her and Frank and Matt, and nothing about their shared history says this is going to go well.

“Matt,” she says warningly before he even speaks, and he’s affronted enough by that that she at least has a chance to brace herself. “Look, I know what you want to say…”

“And yet you keep putting yourself in harm’s way like this.”

Her voice lowers to a harsh whisper, though she knows Frank is still listening. He may not have Matt’s particular gifts, but this apartment isn’t exactly huge, and while they can’t see him from the kitchen where they’re lurking, that certainly doesn’t mean he can’t hear them.

“He came _here_ , Matt. I didn’t seek him out. I haven’t seen him in _months_. And even if I did…”

“You _would_! That’s the problem!” Matt hisses.

“It’s not _your_ problem,” she fires back. Her arms are folded across her chest, tight, creating a barrier between them that she knows he feels.

“Karen, you know…”

“I know you feel responsible for me. But I’ve told you a million times that I can take care of myself.”

“And yet you wind up being taken hostage, being shot at, being in danger…”

The ‘because of me’ isn’t spoken, but with Matt it doesn’t need to be, and she hates it because he’s kind of right. Not that it’s all about him – she gets into plenty of danger on her own, thanks – but that, historically, she _hasn’t_ been able to take care of herself. People just have a habit of showing up at exactly the right time for her.

“This is why I didn’t want you here,” she says, and she means it. It burns within her and when she lets it out, it burns the inside of her throat like bile.

“You didn’t want me here because you knew I’d say something like this, and because you knew I’d be right.”

“Right about what? We have this argument every single time we talk, and I’m so _tired_ of it, Matt! I’m so tired. And you’re wrong about Frank. Frank wouldn’t hurt me.”

This last part pitched so low that she’s hoping Frank doesn’t hear her, because it’s embarrassing how sure she is of that. Especially after the way they left things.

“That’s naïve.”

“Why? Because he’s a vigilante?”

Pointed, stated, her eyebrows high and daring him to judge. He heaves a sigh and looks at her with disappointment, and she wants to scream, because how did they get _here_ of all places? How did she and Matt end up like this?

“I’ll be back later to check in,” he says, sensing a finality to her cruel response. She knows he’s not going far. He’s going to go lurk around the rooftops in his suit and listen for trouble. As eager to prove her wrong as he is to keep her safe.

“Fine.”

It’s not giving him permission. It’s _not_. It’s an indication that she knows he’s going to do it anyway.

“Fine,” Matt says, which is petty but unsurprising because everything they’ve done lately has been, and he stalks towards the door without saying a single word to Frank, who’s watching them both, impassive as always.

She closes the door behind Matt. Stays facing it for a moment, with her hand on the wood. Then she locks it. All four locks.

Locks herself in her apartment with a wounded mass murderer, and she feels safe. Maybe she really _is_ naïve.

“I didn’t know where else to go,” Frank says, sudden and a little defensive. She turns to look at him, and he’s looking around at her carpet, now stained with his blood. She tried to catch him when he first fell, so it’s all over her clothes, too. And her chest and hair.

“It’s fine,” she says, pulling her hair back. But it’s too little too late, and she can feel his blood crusting in it. “Let me get you a blanket.”

She expects him to argue, but he just watches her as she goes into the bedroom and comes back out with a sheet for the couch and a big blanket her grandmother knitted her when she was a child. He gets up when she approaches, grunting a little, one arm tucked across his stomach, holding his ribs. But he doesn’t complain, and he takes one side of the sheet and helps her lay it out over the couch.

“You gotta clean off first,” she says when he almost goes to sit on it, and he grunts again, displeased. “You have to get that blood off you.”

She doesn’t threaten to kick him out if he doesn’t, but he doesn’t seem to need the motivation.

“I’ll need clothes,” he says, looking down at the tatters of his black t-shirt on the ground.

“Luckily for you, I’m a big fan of men’s sweatpants,” Karen says dryly, and she goes back into her bedroom to retrieve them.

He’s leaning in the doorway when she finds her black pair, and it’s surprising how quietly he can move when he wants to. She’s used to Matt sneaking around, appearing out of nowhere with a quip about something he overheard from a floor away, but Frank seems too solid to move as silently as he does. He’s not exactly a subtle man.

“Thank you,” he says, and he’s doing the thing where he looks into her soul, and she doesn’t want him to, doesn’t want him to see anything there ( _not your first rodeo_ , he said), so she lowers her gaze to the bandaged up wounds on his chest.

“Let’s get you cleaned up,” she says.

 

* * *

 

He doesn’t like that she insists on being the one to clean him, but admits he can’t reach his back, and admits he’s still a little lightheaded, and when she points to the bathroom, he goes. She dips a washcloth in steaming water, makes him sit on the toilet seat in her narrow bathroom, squeezes in beside him and tries not to think about how intimate this is.

It doesn’t have to be awkward. It doesn’t have to be intimate. It only has to be one person cleaning the blood off a second person. How come it can be so utilitarian when Claire does it, but Karen’s hands are shaking and her breath comes too quick? Maybe because Claire is used to it. Used to people she cares about turning up half dead and needing her help. Or maybe it’s different when Claire works on Matt. Maybe she’s just as scared. Hard to imagine, but then again, Karen knows almost nothing about that side of Matt. Only knows what he told her, months ago, in an attempt to salvage the ruins of their relationship that ultimately fell too flat.

Maybe Karen’s just too damn soft to do something like this for another person without it meaning anything.

Or maybe it’s just _Frank_.

_You’re dead to me_ , she had said, but when he collapsed in her living room and she felt frantically for a pulse, that had been the farthest thing from the truth. You don’t say _no, no, no_ and sob _please wake up_ to a man you want dead and gone, and she wishes there was a way to tell him that without actually telling him that.

When she wrings the washcloth out in the sink, the water turns pinkish red, and she looks down at it and feels some sort of shift, some sort of cracking in her head. Some change of angle that has it hard to breathe for a second. The anger fades. The stubborn pride.

“What happened?” she asks finally, and she runs the washcloth over his back, around the edges of his bandages, working off the dried blood, moving lower, trying not to look into her gentleness _at all_.

“Got ambushed. My fault. Wasn’t paying attention.”

“Who was it?”

A long silence until she walks around him to rinse the washcloth, looks down at him, and he heaves a sigh that, on any other man, might have sounded petulant.

“Been working on the Blacksmith stuff.”

Now she gets why he was reluctant to say it; not exactly her best memory of him. Probably not his best of her.

“Someone fill the void you left in his organization?”

“Something like that.”

Frustrated, she wrings the washcloth out again, gets it wet again. The water’s hot, and it turns her hands pink, but she likes it. The heat helps her focus. She knows better than anyone how much Frank Castle can talk once he gets going, but it’s the getting him going that’s the hard part.

“I’ve been doing some work on that myself,” she says, walking back over to him. He’s guarded in a way he hasn’t been since she first walked into his hospital room, and she knows that whatever she wants from him, she’s going to have to pry it loose.

“Yeah,” he says, and now she makes the insanely questionable decision to kneel between his legs to work on his side, where there’s a huge mess of blood, and he looks away. Maybe under all those bruises, he’s blushing too.

“Yeah?”

“Read it,” he admits. “Gave me a few ideas.”

“Great,” she laughs, and he gives her an answering smile, a little pained and so quick that she’s not sure it isn’t mostly grimace. “Giving The Punisher leads.”

“I’d have figured it out eventually,” he says, absolving her though she didn’t ask for it. “And they were gunning for you, anyway.”

“Tell me something I don’t know,” she mutters. He considers for a second, fingers tapping on one knee. She’s got her elbow propped up on his other thigh as she leans in closer to scrub at another stubborn smear that arcs up from his kidneys to his ribs. She’s doing her best Claire impression, but she’s pretty sure her skin is red. Giving her away. Making her look frazzled and flustered even though, when it comes down to it, she’s finding this surprisingly easy.

And Frank says, “three of ‘em were outside your apartment.”

She goes very still, scarcely breathing, and when she lifts her eyes he’s looking down at her, and he’s got this look like he smells something bad. It’s a scrunched up, aching look. It hits her _right_ in the chest.

“When?”

“Three days ago.”

“Did you…?”

“Yeah. Quiet, so you wouldn’t know I was…around. Anyway, they’re dead. But the rest of them were still out there, and they weren’t gonna go away. It wasn’t just him. It wasn’t just the Blacksmith. It never is, right? There’s always someone new. The three men outside your place each had a few hits under their belts. The colonel was hiring real serious criminals. Who else you gonna get to run drugs, I guess. Guns, too. Ammo. Heard rumors of people, but so far I ain’t turned up anything.”

“Trafficking runs through a guy they call Chainz.”

“That right?”

“Yeah. With a Z. This, uh. Scrawny white guy, I’m told. All elbows and knees. My informant tells me most people call him Spider Monkey, because Chainz is a ridiculous name.”

“Right.”

They smile at each other, both tentative, and she stands up, the washcloth long gone cold.

“So who ambushed you?”

“Don’t know. Bunch of the same, at first. Some Blacksmith guys, some of something else. I broke up some sort of…meeting.” Quiet for a second, maybe thinking of the _meeting_ that tore apart his family. “Guns. Guys who think they can punch harder’n me. Simple. But this one guy showed up. Fightin’ everybody. Got me out of nowhere with a knife. Threw it right at me. Halfway across the warehouse. Hit me right under the vest. I got a few shots off, but he kept his distance. Managed to avoid it. He was like some kind of circus freak acrobat. Kind of like your friend Red.”

“Daredevil?” Karen asks, and she folds her arms across her chest again. Like just mentioning Matt makes her want to put her barriers up, protect her heart with her hands. “We aren’t exactly friends.”

“You are sometimes. When he ain’t in a mask.”

They look at each other for a long moment, and she’s a little afraid to breathe. Karen knows it’s kind of a toss-up as to who Frank likes less: Matt or Daredevil. If this wasn’t Frank, she’d be afraid of _him_. But it is Frank, so she’s really just worried about having to listen to a rant about it.

“You know,” she says finally.

“Listen, I know people think I’m just a big, idiot, ex-marine psychopath…”

“I don’t think that.”

A grunt. Doubtful. “Yeah, well. I notice things. People. That’s how I’m still alive. That’s how _you’re_ still alive, too.”

His body shielding hers. She remembers. She nods.

“I didn’t know until he told me,” she says. “Maybe I’m the idiot.”

“Maybe you are,” he says, but he’s smiling a little.

She looks away, grabs the soft black sweatpants off the hamper, shoves them in his direction.

“You should get changed,” she says. “I’m tired. You’re tired. We can talk about this in the morning.”

“Won’t be here in the morning,” he says. And her eyes meet his.

“Be here in the morning.”

His mouth twists into a grimace, but he says, “yes ma’am,” and she believes him.

God help her. What does this guy have to do to get her to _not_ believe him?

 

* * *

 

He takes a while to get changed; she hears the water running, hears him cleaning up whatever blood got on her bathroom floor, and she’s warm and grateful for it. She has time to get him a glass of water and dig a bottle of painkillers out of her purse and put it on the coffee table next to the couch. She uses peroxide on the carpet, but that’s a losing battle and she knows it, and it’s a shitty rug anyway. She bought it at some chain store for fifteen bucks and it’s already got coffee stains all over it from her late night research sessions. She’ll get rid of it in the morning.

She’s washing her hands in the kitchen when he walks out of the bathroom, shirtless and scarred but clean at last, looking better, looking pale and tired and still a little unsteady but at least looking alive again. Looking _good_ , too, which... She averts her eyes before he spots her watching.

“Thank you,” he says, and she smiles, but it’s thin and uncertain, and he seems to sense her discomfort, because he doesn’t say anything else. Just goes to the couch, and she dries her hands and looks at the only thing on her fridge: a picture of she and Matt and Foggy at Josie’s. Before everything that eventually tore them apart. And she’s so fucking lonely, and she doesn’t _want_ to say anything, but he’s the only person here, and she _knows_ why it’s weird, knows why there’s something hanging in the air between them when there wasn’t something there before.

“I didn’t mean it,” she says before she can stop herself. And there’s a long silence where she’s afraid to leave the kitchen, and she hears him shifting uncomfortably on the couch.

“You knew what you were saying,” he says finally, and she closes her eyes. He’s right. She knew what she was saying. And at the time, she _had_ meant it. She _thought_ she meant it. And importantly, she knew what it would mean. “Don’t- don’t just pretend you didn’t. You knew what you had to say, and it didn’t work, and you were angry. I get that. But don’t act like you didn’t know.”

“I knew,” she admits. She walks out from around the wall to look at him, and he’s sitting on her couch and watching her the way he did in the diner. Impassive. Ready to understand, but doubting that he’s going to. _You always serve bullshit, or is that just her?_ She folds her arms across her chest and waits.

“And you said it anyway.”

“I said it. I wanted to hurt you.” It’s maybe the most honest thing she’s ever said. “I wanted to scare you, and I wanted to hurt you, because that’s what I was feeling.”

“You knew I would pull the trigger. I always pull the trigger.”

“I hoped…I hoped you wouldn’t.”

“Why? He was gonna kill you somewhere quiet and leave you to rot. Why _him_? Why’d you choose him to get all high and mighty on, huh?”

“Because I knew he could tell me what you wouldn’t, and I wanted to know the truth.”

He laughs, hollow and bitter. A scoff, and he looks away from her. Down and left, shaking his head like he always does when he can’t quite look at her.

“Yeah.”

“I’m sorry, Frank.”

“What’re you sorry for? Doesn’t matter why you said it. You said you didn’t mean it. Well, that’s bullshit. You meant it. I’m the monster they all say, right? I pull the trigger and I’m dead to you. You’re done.”

“ _Does it look like I’m done_?” Karen asks, her voice harsh, broken in the middle. She spreads her arms wide so he can see the blood drying on her white shirt, on the pale skin of her chest and neck from where she held him when he fell. Lowered him carefully to the ground. Felt for a pulse, for a heartbeat, sobs forcing their way from her throat. She speaks slowly and carefully, trying to meet his eye. “Do I look like someone who believed you when you said ‘I’m already dead’?”

He’s quiet for a long moment, looking her over. But shakes his head after. Speaks softly. Doesn’t engage with her passionate outburst.

“That’s on me. I did this. I came here.”

“And I wouldn’t want you to be anywhere else.”

Raw honesty. She wishes it could have been like this with Matt, when he told her he was Daredevil. Instead, she gave him a too-careful, sanitized reaction that only drove them farther apart.

“Look,” he says, but he doesn’t go any farther, and maybe there’s something cooking, but she’s impatient now to say the words. Like he’s Cinderella’s pumpkin coach, and he’s going to just disappear if she waits too long.

“I shouldn’t have tried to stop you,” she says. “I knew. I knew what you were doing, and I knew who he was, what he had done to you, and you- you saved me again, and I knew _you_. This isn’t…at the time, I didn’t know any of this. It was just raw and I don’t really _know_ why I said it. Maybe I did mean it, at the time, but if I had to choose my words again, Frank, _of course_ I would choose different ones. Of course I wouldn’t try to stop you. Matt thinks I’m naïve, that I think you’re some misunderstood soul, but that’s not it. I know who you are. I told you: I think you belong in jail, but I- I understand. I don’t like it, but I understand. I shouldn’t have said what I did. It’s because I know you that I knew what it would mean to you to hear it.”

“Shouldn’t have come here,” Frank decides, and he starts to push himself up, but it’s so stupid because he doesn’t have a shirt that isn’t torn to shit, he looks like he’s been cut into pieces, and he’s still wavering, still a little half dead. Where is he gonna go? How’s he gonna make it to wherever he’s been hiding?

“Frank, please. It’s been months, and I’m _sorry_. Please stay.”

He scowls, clenches his jaw, but he sits back down, and that’s all she can really ask of him.

“I didn’t ask for this,” he mutters, and she knows he means _all_ of it. Whatever connection they’ve developed, be it friendship or just reluctant companionship. Whatever it is, it took them both by surprise.

“You didn’t have to,” she says, and he looks away. “Goodnight, Frank.”

A grunt. Soft, though. It’ll do.

 


	2. Maybe He's Just Broken That Way Now

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Karen visits Frank's place, meets Frank's dog, and manages to keep Frank from completely disappearing on her again.

Frank is still there the next morning, as ordered, and there’s a fresh pot of coffee waiting by the time she wakes up. He’s sitting on the couch, still shirtless, still dressed in her sweatpants and watching something on her shitty TV, down real low so it wouldn’t wake her.

“Morning, Frank,” she says, and it’s much lighter and more optimistic than her _goodnight_ last night, and though his expression doesn’t change, he does actually say _mornin’_ back, so she knows she’s not the only one in a better mood. “You need clothes, don’t you?”

“Woulda been gone by now otherwise,” he says, which she doesn’t believe, and she smiles a little as she rolls her eyes, and she spots his quick attempt to hide his answering grin in his mug.

“Well, if you give me your address and your keys…”

“That sounds like a great idea,” he snarks, actually mustering the energy to put a little false enthusiasm in his tone, and her answering laugh is kind of loud. Kind of fond. Talking last night lifted a weight off of both of them, she thinks. It feels now like they’ve done this a thousand times. It feels way more comfortable than it should.

“Oh, come on. No one will follow me. Promise. I’ll be in and out. Blinders on the whole time. Your clothes were all destroyed last night, except your _highly_ conspicuous vest and your jeans which are way too blood-soaked to move around in in the daytime. _And_ you don’t have any weapons.”

“Don’t need weapons,” he says. Another eyeroll from Karen. “I can pick ‘em up from where I hid them last night on my way back. Coat’s out there, too.”

“Okay, so shirtless and in my sweatpants and a pair of combat boots, _and_ in a trench coat. In broad daylight.”

“Fine. Clothes. But feed the dog, please.”

He has a _dog_. Now it’s Karen’s turn to hide a smile in her coffee.

 

* * *

  

On the way, she takes a call from Matt. Promises she’s fine, that Frank was a perfect gentleman, that he’s back on his feet after she forced him to spend the night on her couch.

“Thought he’d go tearing out of there in nothing but bandages and that vest.”

“He had pants on, but yeah. It was a pretty close call.”

“Did he tell you what happened?”

“You asking me to snitch for you?” she asks. She says the words playfully, but with real warning, too. She wonders if he already knows, if he overheard Frank telling her last night and just wants to see if she’ll tell him the truth. She hates that she has to wonder that.

“Just curious how the guy got to your place bleeding from a stab wound in the middle of the night.”

“He said he was ambushed. He didn’t tell me where, but as messed up as he was, it can’t have been far. Someone _threw_ that knife at him. That’s mostly all I got.”

Technically not a lie.

Kind of a lie.

“But you’re okay?”

“We’re both okay.”

“Is he still there?”

“For now, yeah.”

“You want me to come by?”

“Um…I don’t think that would be a great idea. I don’t want to spook him, Matt.”

She expects an argument, or at least a little judgement. But Matt, much as he worries about her safety over Frank’s sanity, _does_ care about Frank. She forgets that sometimes, but she shouldn’t. She should give him more credit. After all, he was the one who convinced Foggy to take Frank’s case and save Frank’s life.

“You’re right. Doubt my face is one he’s looking forward to seeing. Especially not after I saw him with his ass kicked.”

“And his shirt off.”

Matt laughs again, and it warms her heart to hear it.

“From the sound of Claire’s voice, it must have been pretty impressive. Sorry I missed it. Okay. Take care of yourself, Karen.”

“You too.”

“I mean it.”

“I mean it too.”

 

* * *

 

She’s not surprised that Frank’s place is a shithole, but it’s still kind of sad. She has one hand on her pistol the whole time she’s walking down the street from where she parked her car, her hood pulled up to hide her hair. It’s the first time she’s worn jeans in almost a year, but Frank was right when he told her she couldn’t afford to stick out. _No pencil skirts and patterned blouses_ – his exact words. He said the word _blouses_. Said, _near six foot blonde woman with a face like yours walkin’ into my roach-infested building? People are gonna remember that, and I don’t need that kind of attention_ , too. She’s pretty sure she’s still blushing a little from the _face like yours_ part.

She keeps her head down. Slouches. No one looks twice at her. She enters his building and goes up the stairs and hears the dog barking at the top. It was almost criminally easy. She feels a little embarrassed for being so careful. For going probably a little over the top with the espionage shit.

Frank’s place is a studio over a boarded-up old store. No neighbors in the building, which is probably part of why he got it. Nicer than her own place if he’d put in some effort, but the neighborhood isn’t great, and she thinks rent is probably not an issue. The bathroom is small and still has dried blood on the sink and the grimy tiled floor, and the tiny kitchen area actually looks used, so she’s forced to wonder what the guy can cook.

The dog is a gray pitbull, and he’s massive, but chained up in the corner. He only lunges a few times, trying to get at her, until she inches forward enough to give him a treat from a nearby bag and a friendly scratch, and then he happily licks at her fingers.

Frank carved the dog’s name into his collar: Max. And she wants to fucking die.

“Are you kidding me?” she whispers to him, laughing, scratching him under the chin. Max nibbles at her hoodie, wags his tail, and she’s still grinning as she goes for the area of the room with a battered wooden cabinet. That’s where Frank said she would find his clothes, and she does, and she pulls out a shirt and a hoodie and jeans, boxers and socks from the drawer down below, and it feels like Frank’s just a normal guy for a second.

Sure, there are boxes of ammunition scattered around the apartment, and a literal wall of guns, but other than that. Totally normal.

The wall opposite the wall of guns is filled with documents and maps and grainy photos of bad guys. Ellison always calls it the Wall of Crazy when she’s working on a particularly confusing story and needs to use the corkboard in Ben’s office as a canvas.

Frank’s is less organized than hers usually is, and she knows it’ll take some time to go though. She knows she promised him that she wouldn’t snoop, but she’s Karen fucking Page. Of course she’s going to snoop. At least a _little._ She tucks the clothes into the tote bag she brought with her, and she looks over the wall and the desk in front of it, following the lines and patterns and reading some of the scribbled information on scraps of paper. She remembers when Frank first told her that Grotto did mob hits. Killed an old woman. She had wondered how he knew that. Now she gets it. Frank does his research. Frank doesn’t go after people unless he’s _sure_ they deserve it.

That’s…weirdly comforting, actually.

She keeps a handkerchief in her coat pocket just for moments like this (not that Frank’s going to be dusting for prints, but you never know), so she takes it out and uses it to pull open the desk’s middle drawer, and…

Right on top of a pile of folders and files. The carefully cut edges (not torn, but _cut_ ), newspaper pages paperclipped together. _What Does it Mean, to be a Hero? By Karen Page._ Her first article. The one that spewed all her non-specific feelings for her two favorite vigilantes all over the page. The one that praised and condemned them both. That catalogued her emotions more neatly than she’d ever managed to do to either one of them in person.

She closes the drawer. Feeds the dog. Leaves. Guilty and sorry that she looked, but feeling this corny, horrible, cotton candy sweetness filling up her stomach and leaving her grinning and trying to hide it as she makes her escape.

 

* * *

  

“Mission accomplished,” she says when she walks back into her apartment. She tosses him the tote bag, which he catches with a grumbled _thanks_. She wonders if he did any snooping of his own. She finds it hard to imagine Frank snooping anywhere. But then again, if he wasn’t snooping, what exactly was he doing? Sitting motionless on the couch, watching shitty daytime TV the whole time? That seems even less likely. Maybe he found _her_ tucked-away copy of that article that proclaimed Frank Castle dead (which contained her quote: _Frank Castle was not a bad man. He wasn’t_ ). She almost hopes he did find it. That would be a nice turn of play.

He gets changed in her bathroom, and she lingers in the living room, almost like she’s blocking his way to the door so he can’t try to sneak out or anything now that he’s got his clothes back. When he reemerges, he helps her fold up the sheet and blanket and stick them in her laundry basket. Hands her the sweatpants with a muttered but sincere thank you.

“Don’t you have work today?” he asks, and she thinks again of the copy of her first article tucked away in his desk drawer.

“It’s not weird for me to just…not show up. Ellison doesn’t really expect me to keep to a regular schedule. I’ll text him in a bit.”

“Someone should notice if you aren’t there,” he says, which means he worries about her.

“I’m an investigative reporter. Half the job is the investigating,” she says. A pointed smile. He quirks a corner of his mouth at that, amused but still annoyed. Even with bruises, she can see that. He can seem so blank and stony, but sometimes she can see him so _clearly_.

“Just watch your back, all right?” he asks.

“I always do.”

“Yeah.”

There’s no goodbye, no warning for him to be careful and take care of himself. He’s just gone, and she locks the door behind him, and she stares down at the blood on her carpet and wonders when he’ll come back. _If_ he’ll come back.

 

* * *

  

Of course, their lines of work are kind of entwined, and now that he’s not actively avoiding her, it only takes a few weeks for her to run into him when she’s looking into a string of disappearances and he’s looking to _end_ the disappearances.

“Hey,” she says casually when she sees him, like she hasn’t been genuinely concerned that he’d gone back to trying to excise her from his life. He grunts in return, falling into step with her on the busy sidewalk in a way that tells her that it isn’t a coincidence that he’s here, baseball cap on and in a hoodie instead of the skull vest. She figures this is probably the closest Frank gets to _undercover_. “How long have you been following me?”

“Long enough to tell you ain’t being careful enough,” he says simply, and she rolls her eyes.

“Any ideas who’s behind this?”

“Some.”

“On the record?”

Now it’s his turn to roll his eyes, but her needling tone works, because at the next alley, he nudges her gently into a doorframe, standing close, across from her in the shadows.

“You oughta stay out of this.”

“Oughta do a lot of things.”

“I got it under control.”

“Well that leaves me to report on you _controlling_ it, I guess.”

“You do this with Red, too? Get him to give you, um. Sources? Information? In exchange for not sticking your fuckin’ neck out?”

“Sometimes.”

More than a few times, now. All awkward. All shitty. Unsettling. Sad. Reminders that they’re not the same people they were. Matt has done so much to push away the people he cares about, and she wishes she understood it. Wishes she could have held on with both hands when she had the chance, the way Frank told her to.

“This shit is no good,” Frank says. “Not as a story. Not as a career.”

“Don’t do that. Don’t be like him. I can take care of myself.”

“Got your .380?”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah, well, they’re packin’ more. And they know how to use it.”

“I know how to use it.”

He looks at her for a long while. Grunts something that might be a word. That might be a _right_. Peels away from the wall and rolls his shoulders forward as he walks. Blends into the evening crowd. She doesn’t follow.

 

* * *

 

The next time she sees him is two days later, and he surprises her so much that she almost screams. It’s just this silhouette outside her bedroom window, knuckles rapping against the glass. But she contains the scream to a strangled yelp that fades when she sees the skull on his vest.

“Jesus, Frank!” she hisses, pulling open the window and letting him in off the fire escape. He’s drenched from the rain, shakes his head like a dog. It’s…it’s really cute. Fuck him. She hates that it’s cute.

“Sorry. Least your window was locked. That’s good. You need bars, though.”

“Thanks for the safety tips. What is it?”

“Got something for you.”

He pulls a folder out of his duffel bag and hands it to her. It’s a little bent from whatever was in the bag with it ( _guns, obviously_ , she reminds herself), and when she opens it it’s filled with glossy, professionally shot photos, taken from a great distance. She realizes as she skims through them that she recognizes some of the people in them.

“My missing people,” she says. “Where’d you get these?”

“From someone who ain’t around to miss ‘em.”

“I figured that much.”

“Look. I got you this so you’d stop poking around. There’s something going on here, and I don’t know quite what it is yet, but…” he shrugs. “Your missing junkies ain’t dead. This is proof. They’re being taken to this warehouse here. Know this is weird advice for _me_ to be giving, but take this to the police and let them handle it, all right? Red’s doing some work on this, too. You don’t gotta be out there, risking your life asking the kinda questions that get people killed.”

“Everyone always wants me to stay away from something. If I listened to all of you, I wouldn’t be _anywhere_. Frank, I’m not backing off this story.”

“That guy who almost killed me is in on this somehow. Heard he’s been looking for Red.”

“ _What_?” That’s alarming. When Frank told her about the guy with the knife, the guy who threw with so much accuracy that he managed to hit the open spot just under his arm in his vest, she assumed that the unspoken ending to that story was that Frank pulled the knife from his side and fed it to the guy. That was his style.

“Don’t know. No one seems to be much in the mood for talking.”

“It helps if you cut their tongues out _after_ you get everything you need,” she says, and she’s so concerned with hiding how genuinely rattled she is that her words come out with this weird, amused fondness that she doesn’t fully understand. She sort of lightly slaps him with the folder when she says it, too, and that’s flirty enough for even _her_ to notice it, and she’s fucking mortified. But Frank just huffs out his usual laugh – the one where he looks away, shakes his head.

“Funny,” he says, and she shrugs.

“Coffee?” she asks. It’s a cheap move and she knows it (Frank would have an _impossible_ decision to make if someone told him to choose between caffeine and murder), but he nods, and she’s grateful.

Except then, well. What do you talk about? What do you talk about while you’re enjoying coffee in your living room with the _Punisher_?

“So,” she says when she sets his mug down in front of him on the coffee table. He’s sitting on the couch where he spent the night (shirtless, wearing her sweatpants, and it’s weird that that didn’t mean more at the time because now she can’t stop picturing it. That’s how she knows she’s a wreck who needs to get out more and get more sleep). “Um. How’d you wind up with a dog?”

She thinks sitting next to him will be too much for him, so she sits across from him in the awful, uncomfortable armchair she only put in this room because she inherited it, and she didn’t want to get rid of it.

He’s looking at her, guarded again. Narrow eyed. Suspicious and annoyed. Says, “you really want to know about my dog?”

“Yeah. I love dogs! Um, he reminded me of the dog we had when I was a kid. Her name was Butter.”

The look on his face, the momentary confusion and God’s honest delight, is enough to make that cotton candy feeling come back.

“Who the fuck named a dog Butter?”

“My brother,” Karen says, a giggle bubbling up. “Uh. He thought it was funny? She was a pitbull too. A little lighter gray than Max. Friendly. Everyone in the neighborhood was scared of her, but she was a sweetheart.”

She takes a sip of her coffee, waiting for him to answer her question. He’s still smiling a little, maybe thinking of how Lisa and Frank Jr. would have laughed to hear of a dog called Butter.

“Irish had him,” he says once the smile fades and he comes back to himself. “I took him when I shot up their place. They were using him for fights. I don’t like that. Dog fights. It’s…dogs are…” he sighs heavily, swirling his coffee around before taking a sip. “They don’t do nothing wrong unless people make ‘em that way.”

It’s a serious struggle not to smile as wide at him as she wants to.

“Same can be said for people, I guess,” she finally says when he looks up and catches her staring.

“Yeah. Guess that might be true. But dogs’re more…”

“Pure?” she guesses. She tries to contain the heart eyes. Not just the expression of it, but the feeling itself. _This is a murderer, Karen. A mass murderer. Understanding, respecting, and admiring are three completely different things, and you’re leaning way too far into the third one_.

“Pure,” he agrees. She looks down at her hands before he has the chance to meet her eyes.

“So you took him after you, um, took out the trash?”

“Yeah. Fixed him up. Got him eating again. He still has an issue with pissing everywhere, so I keep him chained up for now when I’m out, at least ‘til he learns better. Or maybe he’s just broken that way now, I don’t know. Anyway, they took him back when they took me in. Threatened to hurt him when I wouldn’t talk.”

“Oh my God, really?”

He smiles a little at her, maybe pleased to hear her concern for his probably only friend.

“They didn’t touch him. Once I got out of the slammer, mopping up the Irish I missed on my first pass, I found him again. No big deal.”

“No big deal,” Karen echoes. Disbelieving, smiling.

“Hey, don’t…come on.”

“What?”

“You’re tryna get me off this conversation we were having.”

“We were talking about dogs.”

“We were talking about you taking risks you don’t need to be taking. Let me tell you somethin’. I get it. And I ain’t trying…I don’t want to be _him_ , right? Like you said. Don’t want to make you feel like you can’t, or like you’re small, or, you know, like you can’t handle your own shit. But this isn’t…” he sighs and leans forward, elbows on his knees. Looks her in the eye, no more looking away or averting his gaze like he does sometimes. “I been thinking of asking Red for help. It’s _that_ kinda bad.”

“Then it’s that kind of important,” Karen insists.

“I’ll keep bringing you what I can, all right? But you gotta stay away from this. At least physically.”

She lets that sit there for a moment, biting her lip, chewing on it as she watches him.

“What is this, Frank?”

“Something I’ve never seen. They’re using those junkies for…something. Something bad. And big. And, shit. Lotta puzzle pieces I don’t really care about falling into place. I just want ‘em gone. But they’re going for Red, so I gotta let him have his say.”

“Even if you have to put them in jail?”

Frank shrugs, leans back. Sips his coffee.

“These people don’t got shit to do with my family. I’ll still see ‘em in the ground when I can. But I don’t need it like I do the others.”

She nods, leans back as well.

“We’ll see,” she says. When he stares at her, when that’s not good enough, she promises, “I’ll be more careful, Frank.”

“Just don’t want to see you gettin’ hurt, ma’am.”

 


	3. Frankly Ma'am? I've Never Been So Insulted

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Karen digs a little deeper as the months go by.

Ellison thinks she should listen to Frank. He agrees with Frank. He’d probably think that was funny if he had any idea that Frank was the one giving her the advice. Or maybe he’d just give her that disappointed dad look he gives her when she’s being extra reckless.

“Karen,” he says in the vaguely snide way he says everything. “I know I’m always telling you that Ben would be proud of you, but even Ben would tell you to back off.”

“That’s a lie.”

“Okay, maybe. But look at what happened to him.”

She sighs when she looks at him, and he looks away. He doesn’t like playing that card any more than she likes having it played, but he plays it anyway. With annoying frequency.

“That’s losing some of its bite,” she tells him, and he huffs a laugh.

“No it isn’t. These pictures…that’s a Yakuza warehouse. And they’ve been teaming up lately with some big players. People are talking about Kingpin, whoever that is, and there’s this Butcher gang making some moves. Not to mention Frank Castle is _still_ out looking for you. I don’t care _what_ the cops say. We both know this new Punisher isn’t just some copycat. He’s still out there, and you’re still breathing, and he wants you to _not_ be breathing.”

“If Frank Castle wanted me dead, trust me. He’s had plenty of opportunity,” Karen says, thinking of him crouching outside her bedroom window and knocking politely on the glass, trying not to scare her. Ellison fixes her with the dad look.

“Where’d you get these pictures?” he asks quietly, pointed enough that he has to at least _suspect_ , and she shrugs, grins. Feels a little feral.

“From someone who isn’t gonna miss them,” she says.

* * *

The Yakuza warehouse is heavily guarded. She knows that’s going to keep her out, and so she delves into the Kingpin thing instead. A new player showing up is interesting, and once Ellison says his name, she sees his fingerprints everywhere. But no matter how long she spends listening to conversations in seedy dive bars, or searching online for any probable hit setups on Craigslist, or following his likely accomplices to their homes and back to their dead end jobs, she isn’t any closer to figuring out who the man actually _is_.

She writes her story about the missing addicts. She doesn’t tie them to anyone directly, because she can’t, but she uses some of the pictures that Frank gave her, making sure the warehouse is visible. If Ellison knew who it belonged to, then everyone else will too. She’s expecting some tips. A couple of threats. Maybe an attempted mugging.

She still feels wild. Feral. That’s not something that’s going to go away. It feels like at every moment she’s daring something or someone to come at her, to fight her, to take her out.

She worries about herself. Is it just because she wants to fire a gun again? Pump bullets into bodies again? Some days, she isn’t sure, and that terrifies her.

(Strong. She felt _strong_ , watching Wesley die. The pain and guilt, that wasn’t until after. Coming down from a high).

Kingpin goes nowhere, as deep as she tries to dig, but someone evidently doesn’t get the memo that it isn’t working, because they email her a picture of herself walking down the street, a target poorly photoshopped over her face.

Against her better judgement, she calls Matt. Wants to meet for drinks. But Matt doesn’t want to show his face at Josie’s, so he tells her to go to the old office and meets her on the roof, dressed as Daredevil.

Every time she sees him in the mask, she thinks it’s funny that she never knew before. Like, obviously it’s him. Why didn’t she ever realize? Was she just that naïve, thinking that Matt would tell her something so huge? That Matt wouldn’t lie to her?

“Hey,” she says, like this is normal.

“Sorry. I thought it was better if no one…”

“Yeah, right. Discreet is better. Um…did you see my piece about the addicts in the Bulletin?”

“I listened to it, yeah,” he says, grinning a little. But the mirth is gone quickly, and he says, “that wasn’t smart.”

Her shrug is a little petulant, but she’s determined to have _one_ conversation with this friend (or former friend, it pains her to admit) that doesn’t end with her blood howling in her ears.

“You fight crime your way, I fight crime my way,” she says lightly. “Anyway, that stuff wasn’t really going anywhere, so I thought I’d take a look at this guy Kingpin. I’d heard that the Yakuza were working with some bigger players, so Kingpin seemed a good place to start. Started digging around. And then someone emailed me this.” She hands him the photo, and his fingers curl around it, bend it, crinkle it as he waits for her to describe it. “Photo of myself taken from far away. Target drawn on my face. Cliché as they come. Any guesses?”

“What was the address?”

“Gmail. Don’t get too excited. I already tried tracing it, but predictably that went nowhere. I don’t think it’s related to the Yakuza, or whatever’s going on in that warehouse of theirs, because it seems a little petty for them. A little personal. They’ve got bigger problems to worry about, like _you_ , and it’s not like those warehouses were some big secret. My boss was the one who told me about them, and Ellison is about as un-hip as they come.”

Matt laughs, says, “right. Only _cool_ reporters know about the Yakuza.”

“You know what I mean. If Ellison knows something like that unprompted, that means half the city knows it. Not something you threaten a reporter over. Probably.”

“I think you’re right. I’ve been looking into that myself. That’s…complicated. Ancient history stuff. I’ll do what I can for those missing people, but I’ve seen it before, and it usually doesn’t end well.”

That speaks of stories untold, but she doesn’t want to ask him.

“I must be getting close with Kingpin. I just don’t know _how_. I thought I wasn’t making any progress, but... I don’t know if you’ve talked to him at all, but Frank said the guy who almost killed him that time…”

“Frank said?”

“Yeah. Are we really gonna do this now?”

“When else?”

And, well. That’s a good point.

“Never?” she suggests, and he smiles back at her, and he finally looks like Matt to her, and she feels so relieved she almost hugs him.

“I just want you to be safe,” he says.

“I know. And I just want everyone to be safe. I don’t have super hearing or super strength or whatever Captain America has. Or Thor. Or any of them. But that doesn’t mean I can’t help.”

“You know your limits. That’s good. You should respect them.”

“I _do_ respect them!”

“But you’re pushing them. All the time. This picture proves it! You’re telling me someone’s threatening you and telling me you’re not backing off in the same sentence.”

“Could you?” she asks. “Back off?”

Silence from Matt. He doesn’t like that question.

“I’m only saying…there’s got to be a better way. I have to believe that.”

“Your ‘better way’ is me hiding in my apartment while you deal with it. My better way is making them pay for trying to scare me into dropping this.”

She takes the photo back, crumpling it in her fist. Looks at him hopefully.

“Kingpin is a bigger deal than I thought,” she says. “That’s why I’m telling you. Watch your back. Keep an ear out. That’s all I’m saying. It seems like there’s a lot of power behind this, and it seems like they’re going after you, too.”

“I did talk to Frank,” Matt admits quietly. “He and I were working on it, for a time. But like most of our attempted partner-ups, there were disagreements.”

“You don’t say,” Karen says, snorting despite herself.

“A lot of this is…you’re right. A lot of it is related to me. I don’t think I could live with myself if that picture was, too.”

“Luckily for you, Matt, I’m pretty sure we’re just pissing off the same people at the same time.”

“Great minds think alike.”

“Exactly. And even if it’s just for me? Try to work it out with Frank.  I’d feel better knowing you had someone watching your back.” Matt grins a little, ducks his head, and she asks, “what? Think you’re the only one allowed to worry?”

“No. I just…I’m happy to hear you like this. God, Karen. Much as it scares me sometimes, hearing how far you’ve come from when I first met you makes me realize this is what you’re supposed to be doing. I’m really proud.”

Karen would be lying if she said that didn’t mean just as much to her has it always has. Despite everything, despite how strained things still are, Matt Murdock’s approval has _always_ meant a lot.

“Well, I feel the same way. Despite still being a little angry, don’t get me wrong. But I’ve always been proud of you. Both of the men you turned out to be. Do me a favor and put aside your pride with Frank, okay? Whatever’s got you looking scared like you do, I just… I just want you to be safe. I know what it’s like to feel alone. To feel like there’s no one you can trust. And if this thing scares the shit out of _Frank_ the way it seems to, I have to imagine it’s bad enough to warrant another attempt at a temporary partnership.”

“Why did you want to meet with me? Just to tell me this?” he asks, and she feels herself getting emotional in a way she hasn’t in a while. Maybe she does love him. Maybe the confusing swirl of emotion is what love is. But if that’s love, then she doesn’t want it. It hurts too goddamn much. Sorry, Frank.

“I don’t know. Maybe I wanted to see you, and this is the only way to talk to you anymore,” she says. She drops the ball of the picture on the ground, shoving her hands into her coat pockets and turning to walk away. Matt doesn’t try to stop her.

* * *

She thinks sometimes that digging into this shit, into this grime, is a losing game. It’s tiny moments of clarity when she’s a thousand words deep in a piece, when she’s staring at that blinking cursor and reading back over what she’s typed up.

Every time she writes an article, the familiar elements strike her hard. Someone was hurt. The person who did the hurt went unpunished. She looks into it. Researches it. Does her best to uncover the corruption. Nine times out of ten, the corruption is so deep she can’t even find its roots, and she’s forced to be satisfied with scraping out what she can, knowing it’s still growing beneath the surface, and eventually she’ll be writing about it again.

Ellison calls it job security. Then he usually takes another sip of scotch, because Ellison was once a bright, idealistic young man, and he sees himself in her, and he knows that she’ll burn out the way he did.

She doesn’t want that. Maybe that’s typical. Maybe everyone who starts out in this business looks at their mentors with wary hopelessness and thinks they’ll never be so complacent. Maybe one day they wake up and look in the mirror and realize, _holy shit. My mentor was right. This is an endless stream of garbage and I’ve thrown myself into it to try to stem the tide, but all I’ve done is let myself get carried with it._

She doesn’t want to be like him. She wants to believe there’s a way to stop this.

* * *

It goes like this for a while. _Months_. Digging, toiling, exposing small kernels of truth. Justice. Daredevil and The Punisher keep doing what they do, keep turning up handcuffed perps or body parts. Leave Karen to put the pieces back together.

Frank climbs up the ladder to her fire escape more nights than not, carrying folders or pictures or USB drives. She doesn’t ask him where he gets his information. She doesn’t want to know where he gets his information. Same as Ellison does for her, she turns a blind eye and uses what he gives her. Thanks him. Invites him in for coffee. Sometimes he says yes. He’s getting better at small talk. She goes out for dinner and drinks with Foggy, goes for long walks with Matt when he can spare the time while he’s waiting for the sun to go down, and drinks coffee at midnight with Frank. Three friends in the world, and she wonders if she’s ever going to stop feeling so fucking lonely.

Then again, she’s been writing better and better. More. Writing stuff that matters. Writing things that are getting her recognized, not just by the petty assholes she writes about, but by people who make Ellison get flustered. Important people.

It doesn’t make the loneliness go away. But it gives it purpose. It makes the routine of her isolation, broken occasionally by one of three people, bearable.

* * *

And it’s not much, but it’s little moments as the months go by.

 

“Lisa had a stuffed bear named Jose,” Frank tells her one time, two coffees deep. “Had to make him an eyepatch when his eye fell out. Pink eyepatch, glitter and shit.”

 

Another night, it’s, “You know, maybe I was wrong. Maybe Murdock wasn’t meant for you. Think you’re more of a hurricane than he’s prepared to deal with. And Red’s a man who seems like he could weather a _storm_.”

 

And another time, he says, “Worst date I ever had? Girl named Heather Law. She took me line dancing.” And when she does a genuine spit-take, a little bit of coffee spurting past her fingers clamped against her mouth, he laughs. Not as broken-sounding as before. “Knew I’d get you with that.”

“Holy shit. Holy _shit_. Frank Castle line dancing,” she says when she’s swallowed, and Frank looks pleased with himself.

“Never gonna happen. Don’t fuckin’ ask.”

 

And later still, he does half an impression of Matt. Catches himself almost immediately. Seems embarrassed, ruffled, rattled to have lurched so blindly into familiar territory, into _Frank Castle_ territory. It’s like sometimes he remembers he used to be able to laugh, joke around. Sometimes he feels light enough to be that man again, even if only for a moment.

She wonders if he gets like this around anyone else. Does he slip up? Does he smile and laugh and relax against anyone else’s couch cushions? Or is she _it_? Is she still the one who helps him remember? Does that mean more or less to him than it did in the hospital room?

She giggles hard at his impression and supplies her own. Pretends not to notice the way he clammed up.

Frank’s eyes sparkle when he laughs.

 

“When are you gonna bring Max with you? I miss him.”

“Max ain’t great at climbing ladders. Will you…that’s not even a joke! That’s just a fact. Stop laughing. C’mon, you’re easy. That wasn’t even funny.”

 

“I’m not technically a cat person, no. But I’m about one late night at work from leaving a saucer of coffee for you out on the fire escape. It’s basically like having an outdoor cat as a pet.”

“Frankly, ma’am? I’ve never been so insulted.”

 

Months of this, and it’s weird, because Karen’s pretty sure the fucking Punisher might just be her closest friend.


	4. Don't Tell Me This is a Chivalry Thing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Karen's ties to Daredevil lead a very impatient villain to use her to deliver a message.

It’s hard to tell when a mugging is actually as random as it’s played out to be. It’s usually obvious when it’s all over, when all they’ve grabbed is her folders and papers and USB drives (as if she doesn’t have backups of everything). They usually take the cash too, to make themselves look less obvious, and that’s the really annoying part. Like, why even pretend? She needs that cash. It’s not like it happens _often_ or anything (though these target-the-journalist muggings _do_ happen more often than the genuinely random ones), but it happens often enough to her in her first few months at the Bulletin that she starts picking up on some patterns.

This time is a little scarier than usual right off the bat. The man who steps out of the darkness is spinning the point of a knife on one finger the way a kid might spin a basketball. A level of skill that Karen’s usual attempted muggers don’t have. He’s walking slowly, sort of swaying, like a snake approaching a frightened mouse. It’s barely even dark yet, still not even _rush hour_ yet, and she wasn’t expecting to have to deal with this shit. At least not so early.

Even so, her hand is on her gun.

“I wouldn’t try it,” he says. “This knife will be in your throat before you turn off the safety.”

“What do you want?”

“What does anyone want?” he asks, stepping closer, and she only doesn’t roll her eyes at how theatrical he is because she is, actually, kind of afraid.

He’s not tall, this man. Nor is he particularly muscular. He’s got a lithe kind of look to him, and he’s dressed all in black, and the shadows give him a hollow, haunted look. Eyes that seem sunken in. Cheeks that seem sunken in. She’s seen enough of people with drug problems to recognize someone who’s battled an addiction and come out the other side. His pale skin is pockmarked, scarred, and it gives him a sort of frightened air. But his voice is all confidence, and his movements are too.

“Money?” she guesses, knowing that he wants her to say something and also knowing that that isn’t the answer.

“Respect,” he replies, and he laughs. “Mostly, I want to send a message. Your friend Daredevil. He’s been eluding me. I’ve been trying to set up a meeting. Just a friendly conversation. He won’t bite. Just does his best to punch or kick-flip me into submission and then disappears into the night before I can even start my pitch. It’s _really_ annoying. So I’m resorting to using a messenger. Tell him the Kingpin wants to talk to him. Tell him the Kingpin is getting impatient. Tell him the _Kingpin_ has a mutually beneficial offer for him. And tell him, would you, that I say hi?”

He’s closer still, and Karen is pressed back against the wooden fence, and this alley is dark and empty, and she wishes she had the confidence to try to shoot him anyway, but her instincts are all afire and she knows he isn’t kidding about killing her if she tries something.

“Can I get a name?” she asks. She sounds so much more brave than she feels.

He steps into the light fully, pulling down his hood. And he’s got ginger stubble, hair shorn close. He’s got a sideways grin and crooked teeth, and he’s older than her but not by enough for his face to be so weathered, she doesn’t think. He looks hungry and murderous and sharklike, and it’s weird, how scared even his face makes her feel. Like she can see something there that tells her this is trouble. There’s a target tattooed on his neck.

“Bullseye,” he says.

It’s a stupid name, and she wants to laugh at it and take his power away, but she doesn’t. Can’t. Just watches him. He grins at her one more time, then pulls his hood back up, backing away. He’s retreating. She has a moment of relief, and then he flicks his wrist, so quickly that she doesn’t register why he did it until she feels pain, feels hurt, and screams when she tries to reach for her gun and realizes that her hand is pinned by the palm to the fence behind her, the knife buried deep in the wood, the hilt practically driven through it. She hears him laughing out of the dark as he runs away.

And it’s just…shock. Just pure shock as she drops her bag and drops everything and grabs the knife with her free hand and yanks hard. It doesn’t come out on the first pull. Doesn’t even budge. And it sends shockwaves of pain up her entire arm. But on the second one it moves, and on the third pull she nearly falls over from her own momentum, and then she spins to face the dark alley with the knife ready, but he’s gone, there’s no sign of him, and she’s alone.

* * *

At the hospital, they tell her she’s lucky that the knife didn’t hit any major tendons. Lucky, she thinks, that a guy called _Bullseye_ who wanted to send a message to Matt managed to be so precise. Lucky isn’t the word she would use.

She almost doesn’t call Matt, but she knows he has to. He’s going to be all guilt ridden and martyrish about blowing Bullseye off, and she can’t take any more of that, but the message was for him, and so she needs to tell him. Needs to show him her hand so he knows how serious this is.

She calls him from the hospital and tells him to meet her on the roof. He’s there in less than ten minutes.

“Karen, my God,” he says when she lets him feel it, her hand wrapped in a thick gauze, her arm in a sling that doesn’t seem totally necessary.

“I’m okay,” she says, but really she’s remembering the sound of the knife pulling through her skin, sliding out, taking wood fragments with it. “Some knife-throwing asshole stopped me in an alley. Said his name was Bullseye.

She watches him carefully for a reaction, but she can’t read him the way he can read her, and his face is so featureless when he’s like this. Even the half she can see may as well be a mask.

“What did he want?” he asks.

“He said you have to set up a meeting. Said the Kingpin wants to talk to you. Said he says ‘hi’.” She laughs, watery and stressed. “You and Frank and Ellison all telling me I need to be careful, and it’s not even _my_ work that gets me hurt.”

He has to know how badly that stings, and she can see a flicker of sympathy cross his face.

“Have you talked to Frank?” he asks. She shakes her head. Answers no, delayed, distracted. And it’s funny, because him saying that makes her want to. What would Frank say if he knew?

* * *

She goes back to her apartment intending to sleep. It’s not late, not quite seven, and the painkillers should be making her drowsy but they’re not, and she lies in bed staring at the ceiling, wired. She keeps looking over at her fire escape like Frank’s just going to show up and scare the shit out of her like he does every time he stops by. Nothing, though. It’s still too early for him. If he’s planning on coming by tonight, it won’t be for hours.

Fuck it, right? She knows where he lives.

She’s careful, because she doesn’t want anyone to follow her. She takes a cab to the subway, because she knows Matt finds it difficult to track people down there, and because she feels safer, surrounded by the early-evening crowd, than she does for the short ride in the cab alone. She changes into jeans and a sweatshirt in the filthy bathroom at the station nearest Frank’s apartment, and then she slouches down the street, making an attempt to blend in the way she did the first time she came here.

She wanders around his neighborhood for a little while. Keeps an eye open. Doubles back behind a row of boarded-up buildings, then ducks into an alley and watches to see if anyone appears.

No one. Nothing. She scans the rooftops, too. Still no one. Still nothing.

Knocking on Frank’s door is hard. She almost turns and walks away. She wonders sometimes if she’s reading something, some connection between them, that isn’t there. She’s the woman who helped him remember, but he burned his house down to forget. He closed the door on her, literally, when she offered him help. He used her as bait. He told her to love Matt, forgive Matt, and he told her to stay away from him. He’s been helping her when he can, and lately he’s even been laughing at her jokes, so she knows he feels _something_. But that’s not the kind of connection she feels. She feels the kind of connection that has her wondering if she’s just as delusional as Matt thinks she is.

Frank is her _friend_. And she cares about him a hell of a lot. But he’s so good at looking impassive, at looking unaffected, when he wants to. Will he be angry that showed up here for no good reason? She can’t imagine Frank being the kind of person who thinks showing up just to _talk_ is a good reason.

And yet whenever she speaks to him, whenever they lock eyes, she knows. She is one of the only people left who _knows_ him, who cares about him. That’s not nothing. Not even to a man who wants so badly to be emotionless.

She knocks on the door.

Max starts barking, but stops just as quickly, and she knows that Frank is inside.

“It’s me,” she says, a little hopefully, and then the door is flung open and his brow is furrowed with disbelief, but he freezes when he sees her arm in a sling. She smiles grimly. A little ironically. “Hi, Frank.”

An eyebrow raise, pointed and furious.

“Get in,” he says.

* * *

It’s strange how different and yet the same Frank and Matt are. She hated from the beginning that no one else she talked to could see the similarities between The Punisher and Daredevil. It made her queasy when she realized that she could see that moral line of murder and shrug her way across it, look through it like it didn’t matter. They were protecting the innocent by punishing the guilty. One just did it more permanently than the other. She has come to respect and understand that there are a lot of people – most of them women, she thinks – who are tired of living in fear and just don’t _care_ what happens to the people who make them afraid. Just want them gone. Frank and Matt are both heroes to those people. Frank and Matt are both heroes to _her_.

Watching Frank react to her story, she sees the same tension, the same clenched fists, the same barely contained rage as he paces in front of her that she saw in Matt earlier tonight. But, as with everything, Frank’s reactions are more visceral. More physical, more violent. His boots are loud when he walks. The muscle in his jaw clenches and jumps and his eyes dart around the room. There is nothing _still_ about Frank Castle. He is in motion. He is angry, and she can _feel_ it. She’s not sure what it says about her that she wants to feel it.

“It’s him,” Frank says when she finishes her story.

“Who?”

“Guy who almost killed me.”

“The acrobat?”

“Yeah.”

“Small, gingery blonde, looks like he was into some drugs at one point?”

An affirmative grunt this time, and he rolls his neck, popping it, and she sees his trigger finger twitching hard when he lets it hang down by his side. She knows that if she was Matt, she’d hear his heart racing, his blood pumping furiously, his injury making him tense and overloaded with a need to _do something_.

There’s a feeling that she shouldn’t have come here. That she shouldn’t have told him this. But there’s another, maybe stronger, feeling: she’s glad she did. She wanted this, didn’t she? Wanted the visceral reaction that she didn’t get from Matt? The broken, dark part of her _needs_ to see it, and it’s selfish, it’s so selfish, but so much of her relationship with Frank has been deeply selfish on both their parts, and she thinks they both know it.

And besides. Frank and Matt have very different ways of dealing with problems. And Karen doesn’t want to run into Bullseye again.

“You talk to Red?”

“Yeah.”

“What’d he say?”

“Not much. Felt real guilty.”

“Yeah, well. Catholic.”

“Yeah.”

“Maybe he _should_ feel it.”

“Don’t you start, too.”

“I’m not. What Red does, what Red feels…up to him.”

“Exactly.”

“If I had put that acrobat fuck down like he deserved, this wouldn’t have happened.”

Now it’s her turn to clench her hands into fists. Clenches her jaw, too. Just like him.

“Why didn’t you?” she asks. Realizes it sounds like she’s blaming him. “You usually do.”

“I didn’t know him. I didn’t know what he’d done. Wasn’t gonna shoot him without knowing, and I didn’t think he had a weapon. Thought he was just another fucking vigilante lurking around in the shadows and waiting for an opportunity to jump in and help me out. But he caught me off guard. Threw that knife. Got me weak and coulda finished me off, but ran instead. Knew your place was close by, but I barely made it. Wasn’t paying attention.” A pause, and he makes fleeting eye contact, a grimace flashing across his face. “Mighta followed me.”

“He didn’t mention you. This was about Daredevil,” Karen says firmly. He looks at her, with those fucking eyes again, and she hates how easy she is. Her heart thumps audibly in her chest. “And now you know who he is. You know what he does.”

“And I’ll kill him if I see him,” Frank confirms. And Karen can’t quite…can’t quite bring herself to say the words yet, but she makes it clear with slow, deliberate movements, when she nods.

* * *

 He insists on giving her the cot, actually looks offended when she suggests that she could take the couch like he did at her place. Offended on a personal level, like she just called his haircut stupid.

“Don’t tell me this is a chivalry thing,” she says teasingly as she swallows the painkillers he gives her. He makes that face again: smelling something bad.

“It’s politeness, ma’am. If you were more polite you’d have taken the couch at your place.”

She laughs hard at that, hard enough to make Frank look smug about it as he turns back to making coffee. Karen gives Max a scratch (because what she _really_ wants to do is hug Frank tight and that’s out of the fucking question), and then she goes into the bathroom to change into the clothes he offered her.

His sweatpants aren’t too long on her – she’s noticed that when she isn’t wearing heels, she and Frank are the exact same height – but they’re wide and warm, with thick black material, and she ties the drawstring tight. The hoodie is bigger, deep, an obvious choice for concealing his face. There’s a little dried blood on the collar, but she doesn’t mind.

The more time she spends with Frank, the less she minds. It’s terrifying to find her limits tested and to realize that she can go farther still. But it’s not terrifying enough to send her running. She doesn’t run from things anymore. Hasn’t since she left home.

It doesn’t feel like a big change, being here. Talking to Frank like this. Feeling about Frank like this. It feels like a natural progression. It feels like a new secret to keep close to her chest, where no one will ever see it. She can believe in Frank, believe in what he does. She can feel a softness for him that makes her look forward to the nights when she hears him rapping gently on the window outside her bedroom. She can do all that and never tell anyone how she really feels about it. She can pretend to be conflicted. Pretend to understand people who can’t support him. She’s always been good at playing a part.

“Thank you for doing this,” she says when she emerges from his bathroom and kneels down in front of Max. It’s easier to look at the dog when she thanks him than it is to look at Frank, and she feels a little silly for it. The dog licks happily at her fingers, pushes forward and nuzzles at her neck, sniffing her hair. She’s glad for him. It makes it less uncomfortable to be here, in Frank’s space. Even though he welcomed her in, and even though he was the one who refused to let her go back to her apartment tonight, it still feels like this might be a violation. Like being here might not be right. But when she looks up at him and sees him watching her with the dog, he’s got that same unguarded look he used to give her in the prison, when she’d sit across that table from him, his hands cuffed to the surface, spread open, his expression much the same. Ready to talk. Ready to listen.

“Don’t make a habit of it,” he says, which seems counter to the openness on his face until he says, “getting hurt, I mean.”

“Trust me. One knife through the hand is enough.”

“Hurts, right?”

“Hurts a shitload.”

“Could be a gunshot. Gunshots are worse.”

“Always looking on the bright side, Frank. That’s why I like you.”

He chuckles a little at her tone and takes a sip of his coffee. He doesn’t offer her any, and she would refuse it even if he did. That’s probably why he doesn’t; Mr. “it’s politeness, ma’am” probably just wants her to sleep.

Not that she needs the encouragement. Karen hasn’t been this tired in a long time. She’s tired enough that she almost goes to him. Almost hugs him. Almost cries. She does none of those things, instead. Just takes the extra blanket he offers, laughs off his apologies about there being no heat in the apartment (“no heat in your vigilante lair? There goes your five star Yelp review”), and gets into bed. 

She doesn’t manage to fall asleep until after he leaves to patrol the streets. She’s just lying there with her eyes closed, listening to him move around, get his guns together. She pretends to be asleep, and she takes real comfort in his presence. Just knowing that he’s there is a weight off her shoulders. She doesn’t _have_ to be so strong all the time. She doesn’t _have_ to take on the world alone.

She still can, and she still probably will, but it’s nice to have options.

Before he goes, he rests his hand, palm huge against her, on the top of her head. Goes down on one knee next to the cot. She can almost feel him looking at her. Can imagine he’s making that wrinkle-nosed face he makes sometimes when he’s confused and wary. He takes her bandaged hand and looks down at it, and she keeps her breathing normal and even. He doesn’t say anything, doesn’t do anything more than that. Just turns her palm over, fingertips trailing along the gauze, causing her wound to prickle with itchy, stabbing sensations. Not pain, but awareness. The sensation travels up her arm. He releases her hand and pushes her hair out of her face – not gracefully, but with fumbling, too-big fingers that have forgotten how to be delicate. Then he gets up and walks to the door. She hears him pet Max before he goes. Hears him tell Max, “good boy”.


	5. Did They Deserve It?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Karen recovers from her first meeting with Bullseye, and Frank makes sure she'll be able to handle herself next time.

She manages to sleep for a while – Max’s breathing is loud enough to remind her she’s not alone, and that helps – but she’s awake when Frank comes back in. The sun is just barely starting to come up, and she sits there with her arms wrapped around her knees, pulled up to her chest, and she watches him as he puts his guns away. Neatly, but with a certain amount of jagged force, like he does everything.

“How was your night?” she asks. Her tone lets him know that she’s aware how stupid it sounds, and he grins up at her through a newly split lip. It’s the closest to truly happy she’s ever seen him, covered in blood and soot and grime. His trigger finger isn’t twitching anymore. His breathing is slow and even. For the first time, she truly understands how killing can be cathartic for him. How it can physically _help_ him. It’s not just something that lets him sleep better at night because there’s a few less bad people out there on the streets. It calms the agony in his head. Lets him take a few moments of something close to peace.

“Productive. Couple of the Irish didn’t get the memo. Thought they’d sneak a shipment in. By train this time.”

“Did you blow up the whole depot or just the right cars?”

“Not a lot of time for subtlety, but the building’s still standing.”

“How many dead?”

He stops working, squints at her, wary.

“You really want to know?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. Did they deserve it?”

Softly now: “you know the answer to that.”

“Yeah.” She does. Maybe she wishes she didn’t. Maybe that’s what it is. It would be easier if she could tearfully say that no one deserved to die. But she isn’t like that anymore, if she ever was. “Good,” she says.

He looks at her for a while, then goes back to his guns, and she watches.

* * *

 “Get up,” he says a little later, and he shoves aside what appears to be his gun-assembling table, opening a large spot in the middle of the floor.

She considers asking _why_ , but doesn’t. Tosses the blankets aside and stands looking at him, eyebrow quirked up, his hoodie hanging loose on her thin frame.

“What’s this about?” she asks.

“Gonna teach you self-defense.”

“I know se-“

“No you don’t. Not like this. If you’re gonna be out there gettin’ in trouble, least I can do is teach you how to get out of it.”

She’s still reluctant, but she nods (strong. She needs to feel strong).

* * *

 He tells her to get changed back into her skirt and blouse, since that’s what she wears every day.

“Gotta make it natural,” he says as she slips back into her heels. “This is what you walk around in, this is what you learn to fight in.”

He gets all _Marine_ very quickly. Lays out some kind of mat, but it’s thin and worn, and it barely softens the blow when he starts throwing her around. He moves with an effortless fluidity, every motion practiced and perfect, and she wants so badly to get to that point that even when she scrapes her knee and starts bleeding down her leg, she keeps going. She knows she’s not imagining Frank’s smile when she gets back up without a single complaint.

It’s hours. _Hours_ with just the two of them, and Max in the corner, with almost no conversation except for instruction, gruffly delivered praise, or even-more-gruffly-delivered admonition. He speaks to her with rough touches, nothing gentle or intimate or awkward, just adjusting her stance, bending her arms, kicking her legs apart. She’s sure her skin is bruising up, but she hardly cares, because she starts to get it. Starts to react smoothly to his attacks. Sure, he’s pulling his punches, but she’s able to dodge them. Counter them.

She’s laughing triumphantly and a little giddily, returning his (shockingly offered!) high five, taking in the fact that they’re both smiling and no one’s dying and this has been kind of a perfect day so far, and then her phone rings.

It’s Matt. Of course it’s Matt.

“Hey,” she says. Breathing hard. “Um. What’s up?”

“Where are you?”

“I’m…working. Why?”

“I couldn’t find you.”

She knows what that means: he tried to follow her last night, and he lost her. She wonders if he knows how hard she worked to avoid him. Is a little smug about succeeding, even as she feels a pang of sadness for it.

“What do you need?” she asks.

“Just checking in. I couldn’t find Bullseye last night.”

“You went looking?”

“No, just…listened.”

“Are you gonna set up a meeting?” she asks. She looks over her shoulder and sees Frank crossing the room toward her, wiping blood off his hands – her blood, from her bleeding knee and bleeding knuckles – on a towel, and he’s tilting his head to better hear Matt’s response.

“I don’t know if that’s such a good idea.”

Frank taps her on the shoulder with the back of his hand, and when she looks at him, he holds out his fingers for the phone.

Selfish again, but she feels a rush: Matt knowing she’s here with Frank. That she went to Frank after he disappointed her. So, so selfish.

She hands the phone over.

“What if you had some backup?” Frank asks. Karen leans close to listen to the shocked silence that follows, and a hysterical kind of pressure builds in her chest; an inappropriate laugh. She presses her hand to her mouth and leans in to listen.

“Frank,” Matt says shortly.

“You realize I’ve known for a while, right?” Frank asks. Which Matt evidently did _not_ realize, because he’s quiet again for a while.

“Should have known I wouldn’t get anything past you,” he finally says, and Frank grunts. Good humor in both of them, but there’s a wariness, too.

“Don’t worry. I’m not a snitch.”

“Well, I appreciate it, Frank.”

“Mhm.”

“Not just for your discretion.”

“Right.”

It rankles on her, them talking about her like this – because she knows that’s what they’re doing. Matt’s thanking Frank for taking care of her. Frank’s accepting it.

“Well?” she asks. “What if Frank went with you?”

“Might be worth hearing what he has to say. Then I could take him out.”

“No, Frank.”

“No?” eyebrows raised, Frank looks at Karen disbelievingly.

“What did you expect?” she mouths at him, and he shrugs her off, turns his back on her.

“He threw a goddamn knife through her hand,” he says. “As a _message_. And I did some asking around last night. He’s been busy.”

“Yeah. I figured you went looking. Recognized your handiwork.”

“If I find him, he’s dead. I’m giving you a chance to talk to him first.”

“Thanks, Frank, but I’m not gonna let you do that.”

“Oh, fuck off,” Frank mutters, shoving the phone back to Karen and stalking away, back to the center of the room. “Wrap it up. Time to get back to work.”

“Work?” Matt asks.

“Yeah. Uh. Frank’s teaching me self-defense.”

“What kind of self-defense?”

“The kind that might save my life if Bullseye comes after me again?” she says, harsher and more annoyed than she meant to sound. “Matt, I’m sorry. I’m fine. I have to go.”

“Okay. Just…Karen, please be careful. I know you trust him. I trust him too, in a way. But he’s a dangerous man.”

“Yeah, Matt. Everyone’s a dangerous man these days,” Karen sighs. She hangs up and turns back to Frank, ready. He watches her approach; her hair’s a mess, her leg bleeding so much it’s getting down to her shoe now. She tosses her phone back on his bed and takes her bun out, shaking out her hair as she watches Frank, gathering the strands and pulling them back into a knot at the base of her skull. Her eyes are on him. His are on her. She thinks he might be relieved that she wrapped up with Matt so quickly.

“You gonna try to follow him anyway?” she asks.

“You know the answer to that,” he says. “Come on. Again.”

* * *

 He doesn’t like that she wants to go back home later that night, but he agrees to let her. Doesn’t pretend like he isn’t going to follow her, so she says they may as well walk together. He brings Max on a leash, and they walk all the way to her apartment building, stopping for a light dinner at a diner Frank goes to sometimes. It feels weird. Normal. They talk about self-defense classes she could take, talk about the best locks for her door (“and _window_ ”, Frank keeps stressing), talk about her next article (he suggests, with a stony-serious face, a rundown of the best black coffee from shitty diners, and she laughs so hard that it makes Max anxious).

“Thank you,” she says when they reach her door, and he nods from under his baseball cap, uncomfortable. “You want some coffee?”

“No ma’am. Not tonight. I oughta get home so I can be ready to be out there.”

They both know what he means, and so she nods, fidgets with her keys in her hands.

“Just…keep in touch, okay?”

“Got your number in my phone,” he says. She decides not to ask how he got it.

“You have a _phone_?” she asks teasingly instead.

“Funny. Course I have a phone. My number’s in yours.”

She huffs a disbelieving laugh.

“God, you’re sneakier than Matt sometimes,” she says, and he looks offended again.

“Sometimes, huh? That the thanks I get for harboring a dangerous woman?”

“Keep joking, Castle,” she says, and it’s too sincere, but she continues despite her better judgement, continues with, “it’s a good look on you. And thanks for beating the shit out of me today.”

He grunts, putting distance between them, already heading off. She knew the sincerity was too much.

“Just remember when to use it,” he says. And then he’s gone.

* * *

 It’s a lot harder to sleep that night without Max’s loud breathing half a room away.

* * *

 Ellison gives her a lead on the Butcher gang, and she knows he just wants her away from the Kingpin stuff. She’s feeling generous, so she writes another article about Frank and Matt, the ethically opposed and yet entwined vigilantes of Hell’s Kitchen. But then she chickens out and she doesn’t submit it. Can’t bring herself to. She doesn’t want to invite people to judge them. Condemn them. Compare them. She wants people to celebrate them, even though she knows that’s not an argument she could ever make to everyone. How could people agree with her on both of them? Unless you’re Karen Page, how can you see beyond the mask of one and the brutality of the other?

The Butcher stuff is boring, but it’s safe.

“Anything on Bullseye?” she asks Matt when she sees him next, a few days later, back on the roof of their old office building.

“I think he’s trying to kill me,” Matt says. He sounds annoyed by that. Affronted.

“He’s out for a lot of people. There’s some talk about some professional hits going down. Some of the targets were Yakuza. Whoever’s hiring Bullseye, it certainly isn’t them. And I’ve been working on the Butcher stuff at work, but they’re small time. Even Frank can’t be bothered with most of them. My money for Bullseye is on Kingpin.”

“I think you’re right. You dig up anything new on him?”

“No. Whoever he is, he never meets with his underlings. And they don’t talk.”

“You interrogating criminals now, Karen?” he asks. And she knows that’s his way of asking her if her source of information is Frank.

“I hear things,” she says, which is a yes. “If Kingpin wants you dead, that’s a serious threat. You know that, right?”

“But so far, you’re the only one who has been threatened.”

“So far. Have you checked up on any of the other people you’ve helped? Maybe Bullseye got the idea from that Daredevil’s-friends trap that Turk and I got caught up in.”

“I’ve looked in. None of them seem too shaken up.”

“Well, I’ve written about you in the Bulletin. They probably figure I have an inside line with you.”

“And they’re right.”

“Yes they are.”

She likes this. Talking to him like this. After he told her he was Daredevil, this is probably partly what he was imagining: them working together, them talking about his work. Maybe he imagined that it would be over dinner, but she hadn’t reacted nearly well enough for that to be a reality, and now it’s been months. Too late to take it back even if she was certain she wanted to, and there’s a part of her that doesn’t.

“I guess I should have known,” is what she said at the time. Tearing up. Still kind of emotional and raw after writing her first big article so soon after everything that had happened with Daredevil and the warehouse and Frank. “It explains so much.”

The guilt. The pain on his face whenever he told her he couldn’t tell her the whole story. The bruises. The absences from work. That time he was so injured that Foggy had to take care of him, yet neither would tell her anything, like she didn’t need to know.

It explained those things. But it didn’t make them easier.

“I know you don’t like hearing this,” he says.

“Don’t ruin it, then,” she replies. Shoves her hands into her long coat pockets, at least partially to hide from a blind man the bandages on her hand, the dwindling evidence of her last run-in with someone who wanted Matt dead. Like she can’t even stand to have them in the open. “I’ll talk to you later.”

He nods. Watches her go. She wonders what her heartbeat is telling him. Slow, steady. Even.


	6. No Reason this Can't be a Perfectly Friendly Conversation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Karen runs into a previously dead woman, and things don't go exactly as either of them had hoped.

So the Butcher gang is boring. An upstart gang hoping to fill the recent gaps left by the Punisher. They don’t even do her the courtesy of trying to intimidate her off their story, and she’s feeling boxed in by it. She knows it’s still important: while they may not be big players yet, every gang has to start somewhere. But that doesn’t mean she’s not bored, and so a few weeks after Bullseye’s attack, she starts digging into the Kingpin again. Quietly, without really letting anyone know, but she’s still half-convinced there’s a threat around every corner. It’s hard not to be. She’s looking into mysterious deaths. Drug-related gang activity suddenly shutting down and diverting to other locations. Established gangs just _disappearing._ Fitting for a guy named Kingpin that it seems like he’s wrangling every criminal enterprise in the city and bringing it to heel. And it’s worrying specifically because of that, because he seems to have his fingers in everything, and she feels a sick certainty that he knows she’s watching.

And that’s why she’s a little jumpier than usual when she’s making her way home one night, and that’s why she freezes in place on her stairwell when she hears a soft creak up above, on her landing. Her instincts tell her to turn and run, so she tries to, but a soft blur of a person vaults the railing and lands in front of her, straightens, and it’s a beautiful black-haired woman with tawny skin who stands up from her fighting crouch. She’s got a sai in each hand, held loosely, but she smiles.

“Hello there,” she says in a smooth, cool voice. Accented. Calm. Karen takes her in: black outfit. A red band around her neck. Muscles corded in her arms. She’s still ready to strike.

Karen attacks before the other woman can, but Karen’s only fighting experience (with anyone other than Frank) has been on artless hired goons who went down quick, were taken by surprise. This woman dodges and blocks Karen’s fist and leg with both weapons, anticipating both attempts. Karen knows the woman could have stabbed her if she wanted, so she backs up, putting distance between them with her briefcase held up, and she says, “you’re not here to kill me.”

“Perceptive. No, I’m not. Though don’t say that too loud. I’m sort of playing the role of double agent, here. And I’m really not looking to die twice trying to help Matthew.”

Then the dots connect, and Karen realizes who this woman is, and she feels a sting of betrayal all over again, like she’s seeing her for the first time.

“You were in his bed,” she says, and she sounds about as weary as she feels.

“I was, yes. I would like to be able to say I’m sorry about that, but I’m not.”

She’s bold about it, looks Karen right in the eyes, as if trying to read Karen’s threat level. Karen isn’t feeling very threatening.

“You want a drink?” she asks. The woman considers.

“What do you have?”

“Scotch. Vodka.”

“Sure,” the woman says, in a tone that suggests she’s being polite by accepting. Karen leads the way.

* * *

Karen kind of hopes this woman is a vigilante, because why not add another to her collection of vigilante friends? The woman also hangs her sais delicately on Karen’s coatrack, which is really funny to both of them, and serves to lighten the mood despite the obvious tension in the situation.

Karen grabs her scotch from her room. Opens her window while she’s in there. It’s not a signal per se, but she knows more than one person who’d be interested in this conversation.

“What’s your name?” Karen asks. “Or your…superhero name or whatever.”

“Not a superhero,” the woman laughs, but she seems delighted by the mistaken assumption. “Just a really, really good fighter. And my name is Elektra.”

“That’s enough of a superhero name on its own,” Karen decides. She feels a little unpolished next to this woman, who sits easily on the couch, almost primly, as if she’s used to far richer blood, and far better furniture.

“Mm. If only I could shoot electricity from my hands, yeah?” Elektra says, and Karen smiles as she hands Elektra a glass. Elektra seems like she wants to comment on the quality of the alcohol – from the little wrinkle in her nose when she takes a sip, Karen’s guessing it won’t be a favorable comment – but she just looks at Karen, watches her, lets her go first.

“I’m guessing you’re here for a reason,” Karen says.

“Well it’s certainly not for the cheap scotch. I…sorry. That was rude of me. I’m a bit on edge.”

Karen shrugs.

“Look around. Everything I own is cheap something,” she says, and Elektra smiles.

“I suppose I’m worried because I imagined you would be…unwelcoming when you realized who I was.”

“Other than that you were in my then-boyfriend’s bed, I don’t really know who you are at all.”

“Did Matthew never tell you?”

Elektra seems annoyed, and Karen huffs a laugh at this unlikely bonding experience.

“ _Matthew_ doesn’t tell me a lot of things,” she says.

“Well, you sacrifice your life to help save a man, and he goes and forgets all about you. I shouldn’t be surprised.”

“You mentioned dying downstairs, too.”

“Yes, well. Hard not to talk about it.”

“So you died? Like…really died?”

“Was buried and all.”

“Um…”

“I _know_. It’s a lot to take in.”

“Does Matt know?”

“Matthew was there when I died. I’m told he was one of the only people at my funeral, which is a bit insulting, but I’m trying to be a big girl about it. But if you’re asking…no. He doesn’t know that I’m alive.”

“How? He knows everything.”

Elektra laughs, delighted.

“Well that’s refreshingly optimistic of you. No, Matthew certainly does not know everything. And I’ve done well hiding from him so far. I know you’re wondering why, or maybe you’re thinking that coming to see you was a bad idea because he’s nearly always watching you, but I made sure to set up a distraction so I could have this meeting.”

“Well that’s…ominous.”

But her .380 is right in her purse, and if Elektra has died once, surely that means a bullet or two can stop her if it comes to that.

“I don’t want it to be ominous,” Elektra says. “No reason this can’t be a perfectly friendly conversation. I’m just…not ready to face him yet.”

Karen understands. Says, “you love him,” and it isn’t a question. Elektra sighs. Shrugs. Looks angry and annoyed.

“I _suppose_ ,” she finally growls. “Though it’s inconvenient. Do you?”

Karen shrugs as well.

“I did. I don’t know if I still do.”

“Mm. He does inspire complicated emotions. Complicated relationships.”

“I’m sorry, when did you die again?” Karen asks. And Elektra smiles.

“Helping Matthew rescue you and the other bait from that warehouse.”

“Oh.”

“Don’t worry. I don’t blame you for Matthew being a short-sighted idiot. Running in there without a plan. And they wanted me, anyway. They just knew they had to do away with him, first. Silly, though. Me dying just after he promises to run away with me. Leave this awful city behind.”

It’s sad, Karen thinks, that that can cut her as deeply as it does.

“How are you here?” she asks instead of reacting.

“That’s a very long story, and I’m afraid even I don’t know most of it. But I’m here. That’s the important part. And I’m here in your apartment, which right now is even more so. I heard you had a run-in with Bullseye.”

“How’d you hear that?” Karen asks, curling her hand around her glass, self-conscious of the bandage around her palm.

“He told me.”

“ _Bullseye_ told you?”

“We work for the same employer. Well. _Work for_ is a bit of a stretch. And it’s complicated, like I said.”

“Kingpin, right?” Karen asks, and Elektra laughs. She has an infectious laugh, throwing her head back, her expression one of naked delight. It makes Karen smile, even as she feels her fear of this woman growing.

“Yes, in a way. That’s the simplified version. There’s a longer one, one with far more intrigue, if you’re interested in that sort of thing. Frankly, I’m not, but it keeps me busy, and I suppose I owe the fuckers _something_ after they went through all that trouble to resurrect me. Anyway, that longer story, it adds up to that I’m not so much working for Kingpin as I am trying to topple him for my own aims. But for the sake of this conversation: yes. Bullseye was hired by Kingpin to assassinate Daredevil, among a number of other people. Including, _hilariously_ , a lawyer named Matthew Murdock. But it’s Daredevil he wants for now. And as we both know, Daredevil is a slippery character, and has so far eluded him. I told Bullseye that I could get to Daredevil by getting to you. He has no idea I know _exactly_ who Matthew is, don’t worry. I’m not going to sell him out that badly.”

Icy fear for a second, tingling through Karen’s senses.

“So this really _isn’t_ a friendly conversation.”

“It can be. It’s been friendly so far.”

“What do you want? You know who Matt is. You know where he lives. Why do you want me? Why not go warn Matt yourself? Or talk him into meeting with Bullseye for whatever it is Bullseye wants from Matt? Why all this cloak and dagger bullshit?”

“Insurance. Bullseye is going to track down Daredevil tonight. If Matthew is less than willing to listen to Bullseye’s proposal, I’ll need to send some evidence that you’re in my clutches. And don’t think of reaching for your weapon. That wouldn’t be very smart. I assure you: I’m faster.”

“I noticed. That move I pulled in the stairway usually works.”

“You sound angry. I don’t blame you.”

“I’m getting _really_ tired of being held hostage, being hurt, being used to get to Matt. We’re barely even friends anymore.”

“Woman to woman, I thought it was a little insulting myself. Which is why I volunteered to come rather than let Bullseye send one of his many cronies.”

Karen hates that she likes that. Hates that it makes the corner of her mouth lift up a little. Sure, Elektra is still threatening her. But at least she’s not being a total dick about it.

“Well, I appreciate it. Though I don’t understand why you can’t just take out Kingpin yourself. Save yourself the trouble of probably losing Matt forever.”

“If only it were that simple, I wouldn’t be here. But I’ve never met Kingpin. He only speaks through intermediaries. The people I work for – the people I _really_ work for – they want him dead, and I’m their weapon. Unfortunately…”

“Right.”

“Very mysterious. And a _pain_. But at least he’s been giving me fun assignments to ‘prove my loyalty’. Until this one, anyway.”

“Matt should know you’re alive.”

“He will. I’ll tell him. Soon, actually. I think I may need to intervene more directly. If Bullseye ever gets around to _actually_ trying to kill him instead of all the other foolishness, I obviously can’t allow that to happen. Though it’ll be painful for us both if it comes to that: I may have to take a few of your pretty fingers to motivate him to cooperate with what Kingpin wants him to do. Not sure he’ll forgive me for that.”

The sound of the shotgun pumping behind Karen is the best thing she’s heard in her life. Elektra’s calm grin turning to an expression of shock is the best thing she’s ever seen.

“Wait!” Karen says, standing up, blocking the shot but not turning her back on Elektra. “Don’t shoot her.”

“Not gonna shoot her unless she makes me,” Frank replies, and she hears him stepping out from the shadows of her bedroom. “Was gonna give you shit for leaving your window open.”

“Counted on that, actually,” Karen says. She steps around the armchair, still watching the assassin. When she’s got more distance between them, she turns to look at Frank, and gasps when she sees his face. Freshly bruised and scraped. His dark shirt is wet with blood. “What happened?”

“Ask _her_.”

“I’m sorry, since when do _you_ know _The Punisher_?” Elektra asks. She doesn’t look anymore like a woman who has been one-upped. She doesn’t even look like a woman who has a shotgun trained at her face. Karen wonders if there’s a reason for it or if she’s just really good at false confidence. Frank looks away from her for a second to look over Karen, make sure she’s okay.

“She had some guys guarding the place,” he says, correctly figuring Elektra isn’t going to answer. “They’re dead.”

His voice goes lower when he’s like this, Karen notices. And he doesn’t move. Doesn’t shake. Doesn’t even seem to breathe as he stares down the barrel at the woman on the couch. Karen doesn’t want him to shoot Elektra, doesn’t think he _will_ shoot Elektra, so she eases out of the line of fire and goes to stand beside him.

“Anything bad?”

“Nothing I can’t stitch up. Your guard dogs weren’t very good, lady.”

“Unlike Ms. Page’s, apparently,” Elektra quips.

“Don’t shoot her, Frank. She knows Matt,” Karen says, and Frank gives her a look that speaks volumes. “I _know_.”

“She said she was gonna cut off your fingers, and you want me to let her walk because she knows your _ex_?”

“I think the finger thing was mostly hypothetical?”

“Knew it was a mistake to let you come back here.”

“What, like ever?”

“Until this Bullseye bullshit is done, you’re stayin’ with me.”

Karen sighs and fights the rising headache by rubbing her temples. At any moment, Frank could decide that enough is enough and shoot Elektra anyway, and Karen doesn’t want that. She doesn’t want anyone to die in her fucking apartment.

“Just…relax, please,” she says softly, almost under her breath. She curls her fingers into fists to avoid reaching out for him the way she wants to. It would be so easy to just rest her hand on his arm. She thinks it might even help him focus. But she doesn’t do it. “Frank…”

“Not gonna shoot her unless she makes me,” he repeats, still not looking at her. He’s so tensed up, so rigid, and she can see his jaw clenching.

“I have to say, you’re even more impressive than I thought. Pictures don’t do you justice. Those were some of my best men.”

“You don’t seem too sorry to see ‘em go.”

“That’s because they’re using me for a war I have no interest in. I don’t care about them. I care about me, and I care about Matthew, and about anything Matthew cares about. That includes you, Ms. Page. I wasn’t lying about not wanting to take your fingers.”

“You’re not taking anything,” Frank snaps, tension mounting, and Elektra smiles.

“We’ll see,” she says. Frank takes a step forward, and Karen follows, giving in and gripping his upper arm with both hands, trying to keep him in place, stepping back in front of him.

“Please don’t push him,” she sighs over her shoulder to the assassin.

“But pushing is what I do best.”

“And pushing back is what _he_ does best.”

“He’s a bit shorter than I expected.”

“I’m just really tall,” Karen replies, a little defensive for some reason, and Frank tries to hide his smirk. But Elektra sees it, and she smiles back.

“Isn’t this sweet,” she says, and it sounds like she means it, though she also sounds annoyed by it at the same time. Karen can relate. “Karen Page, for such an otherwise average woman, you really do have the most remarkable taste in friends. You’re a bit like the other one, Claire. Always patching up vigilantes. Always getting herself noticed. Too bad Bullseye couldn’t find her, or I’d be over threatening _her_ pretty hands. And she needs them more than you, I’d think.”

“I’m a journalist. I type for a living. I’m pretty sure I need them,” Karen says. To Frank: “I’m calling him.”

“Don’t do that,” Elektra says warningly.

“He needs to know what he’s walking into,” Karen says. She doesn’t know why she’s trying to justify herself to this woman. Again with the confidence, she supposes. Elektra seems to take charge just by looking in your direction.

“Bullseye isn’t going to kill him now. The idea was to take you to another location. Keep you there until we needed him to decide whether your life was worth refusing the deal that Bullseye was going to offer. Not that it would ever be a question, the self-sacrificing idiot.”

“I’m calling him,” Karen says. “Frank?”

“Yes ma’am,” Frank replies. “I’ve got her.”

“Ma’am,” Elektra repeats, delighted. Karen goes for her purse, goes to grab her phone, and Elektra pounces.

It’s not that Karen is surprised. But, well, she kind of is. She wasn’t expecting Elektra to be so _fast._ She wheels around, avoids Elektra’s first strike, but the second hits her hard, and her head snaps back, her cheek on fire from the punch. Elektra tries to grab her, but Karen knows better, knows she wants to use her as a shield, and so she lets herself fall back, tripping gracelessly over the coffee table. Frank fires now that she’s out of the way, but Elektra moves quicker than him, moves quicker than anyone Karen has ever seen, moves like a snake, and she lunges for him. Frank clocks her in the chin with the shotgun as she gets close, but she grabs a knife from the counter and slices at him, makes contact.

Karen manages to pull her gun out of her purse, aims, fires, but Elektra pulls away from that in time as well, barely grazed. Barely bleeding.

“Nice try,” she says, and she grabs Frank’s shotgun and spins them both around so that Frank is pressing her against the wall, his back to Karen, the smaller assassin blocked by him.

“Go!” Frank yells to Karen, ducking an attempted stab by the still-delighted Elektra.

“No! I’m not leaving you!”

“Get to the apartment. Do it!”

And she does it.

Later, she won’t be able to say why. But he’s right, and she knows it, and so she goes without argument, even though she wants to give one. Her apartment is too small for three people fighting in it, and she’s the one that Elektra wants, and if she’s out of the equation, it’ll be easier for Frank to focus, so he doesn’t have to worry about keeping her safe. And all of that is true, but she knows that at least part of it is because if she isn’t there, she doesn’t have to stop Frank from killing.

God, but that hurts to realize.

She doesn’t want Elektra dead. She _doesn’t_. But she doesn’t want to lose her fingers, and she doesn’t want to be used as a pawn, and she doesn’t want to have to stand between Frank and this woman and tell him not to kill her. Because if she was there, she would have to. For Matt. For herself, for her belief in her own goodness. She would have to reopen the wounds that were made when she told Frank that he was dead to her.

She’s halfway to Frank’s apartment before she realizes that she doesn’t have a coat. Doesn’t have keys to his place. Only has her purse, her gun. Is dressed like a lawyer.

But no one tries to stop her. Tries to hurt her. No one even _looks_ at her. Maybe she looks that kind of crazy, that unique brand of Too Crazy for even the hardiest New Yorker to tangle with.

She makes it all the way to Frank’s building and is relieved that at least the outer door is unlocked. Below his studio is a boarded-up old corner store, so she doesn’t think anyone else uses this stairwell, and she staggers up to the landing on legs that only now start to shake, after half-running blocks to get here. The tries the door just to see, but it’s locked, and she sighs and curls against it, legs bent in front of her, tucked hopefully far enough in the shadows to avoid anyone seeing her if they walk by the window at the bottom of the stairs. Max barks a few times at her, but she shushes him through the door, and he eventually settles after a few forlorn, wondering whimpers.

Her phone finds its way into her hands, and she dials Matt, but she’s not surprised when he doesn’t answer.

She calls Foggy next, and she’s not surprised when he does.

“Foggy, I don’t know what to do,” she cries when he answers, and she can hear his surprise, can hear him standing up from his couch, pausing his TV.

“What is it? Where are you?”

“I can’t tell you that, Foggy. But I need to get in touch with Matt.”

“Yeah, well. You know what kind of magic _that_ takes…”

“He’s in danger.”

“He’s _always_ in danger.”

“Some woman tried to kidnap me. She said her name was Elektra?”

“Elektra? Elektra is dead.”

“Apparently she was. And now she’s not.”

“That…that doesn’t make any sense.”

“Your college roommate is a blind ninja vigilante!” Karen hisses.

“Okay. That’s…fair. Are you safe? Did you get away?”

“Yeah, I’m…Frank’s still back there. I don’t know. I don’t know if anyone followed me, or…but he’s back there fighting her, and she stabbed him, and I don’t…”

“Let me get this fucking straight. Matt’s out there, in trouble, because you got kidnapped by his reincarnated ex-girlfriend, and the Punisher may or may not be dead because he was trying to save you. There any other ridiculous bullshit you want to fill me in on?”

“Um. Elektra is working for the Kingpin, and there’s this guy Bullseye who…”

“Of course there is. Karen, what are you _doing_? Why are you still dealing with all this? Please, for your own sake, stop trying to fix everyone and start recognizing that it’s not your job!”

“I’m not trying to fix anyone! I’m just trying to live my life, Foggy!”

“Right, and currently that doesn’t include trying to _rescue_ Frank Castle?”

“Frank Castle doesn’t need to be _fixed_ ,” Karen snaps, and Foggy’s silence speaks of disdain. Speaks of disbelief. Of course it does. She doesn’t know why she ever thought he would react differently.

“Right,” he says. Then, “Jesus Christ, Karen.”

“I only meant…”

“I know what you meant. And I’m sorry, but I can’t help you. Matt doesn’t answer my calls, either. Take care of yourself, Karen.”

The line goes dead, and Karen has never, in all her life, felt so alone.


	7. We Aren't Keeping Secrets Anymore

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the aftermath of her first meeting with Elektra, Karen tries to figure out what to do.

When the door at the bottom of Frank’s stairwell opens, Karen has her gun out and ready, pointed at the bottom of the stairs. She’s expecting a bloody, vengeful Elektra. Expecting a horde of her warriors. Expecting Bullseye, even. But it’s Frank, skull-emblazoned bulletproof vest and all.

“Frank,” she breathes, going to the bottom of the stairs, and there’s this moment where she genuinely believes she’s going to fling her arms around his neck, but she stops herself and settles with worried hands hovering near his forearm, where she saw the knife make contact. He looks at her, surprised by her breathless concern. “Are you okay?”

“I’ll survive,” he says. But he takes so long to say it, looking at her so intently, that she wishes she _had_ hugged him. She wants to. Wants to know if he’d hug her back or just grunt at her and look annoyed.

“Elektra. Is she…?”

“Wily. She got outta there when the tide turned. There are, uh. Some new holes in your apartment.”

“If this keeps up, no one’s gonna rent to me,” she says pointedly. “I’ll develop a reputation.”

“You can go back and get some stuff tomorrow. Should find a new place anyway. That place isn’t safe.”

“No place in this city is safe right now,” she reminds him. He sighs.

“Yeah.”

* * *

She doesn’t have to help him up the stairs. He’s not _that_ badly injured. But she helps him with the rest. Helps him out of his jacket, helps him unbuckle his vest. There are scratches down his neck from Elektra’s fingernails. Three slices on one arm from her kitchen knife, one deep. He clamps his fingers around that one and asks her to get the first aid kit.

She sits across from him at his table and watches him sew himself back together. He seems flustered by her eyes on him, but his hands are steady. It’s somehow the hottest thing Karen has ever seen, but she hates herself a little for thinking it.

“I been thinking,” he says, out of nowhere. Doesn’t look at her, so she knows this isn’t going to be good. Or maybe it’s going to be _too_ good, and Frank is bad at that. “All this you’re in. You don’t mind it. And, you know, if you were too scared or you were askin’ for help all the time or, shit, crying at me about it I guess, maybe I’d know what to do. Get you away so I could take care of it. Easy to take care of people when you don’t really know them. Some lady gets shot at in the street for no reason, I’m gonna help her, yeah. You know, I’m not gonna just let her get shot. And I’ll kill the ones who were tryin’, and I’ll be helping whoever else they were gonna hurt later. That’s easy. But you just keep fucking running back into it. And I keep telling myself I’ve done my part. I’ve kept you alive when you were in danger ‘cus of me. And then we were done, and I was…fine.”

“You’re assuming I didn’t know about Lance Platt,” Karen says, because he seems to need some time to think of the next words. And when she says that, he blushes. Actually blushes. His ears, sticking out around his short hair, redden. She wants to die.

“Didn’t realize…”

“I knew. Accidents like that don’t happen around here. Not a day after a guy threatens me with a knife a block from my place.”

“I…look, you know, I wasn’t…”

“I know you didn’t want any of this,” she says. Looks steadily at him even when he looks away. “You think I wanted it? You’re not exactly an easy friend to have, Frank.”

“No ma’am.” A small grin. “Guess not.”

“But there’s something…even before I met you. We have more in common than you think.”

“The .380,” he says, and she nods.

“Yeah. And when we first took you on as a client, I wanted to prove that you weren’t a monster because…I don’t know. I wanted to help you, but there was also a part of me that wanted to prove that _I_ wasn’t a monster. But, God, when I said you were dead to me, said that you _were_ a monster if you killed him…I don’t think that. I don’t think that at all. And if you think I stopped paying attention, you _are_ the idiot. You’re not the only one who worried. You’re not the only one who was keeping tabs. There’s- there’s something here, Frank. I care, whether I intended to or not.”

Maybe he _didn’t_ snoop in her apartment that time. Maybe he didn’t see her notes on him, see the files that she keeps locked away. Because he’s looking at her and she can tell that what she’s saying is all new to him. All _means_ something to him.

“I didn’t mean for you…” He sighs, looks down at the thread still looped in his arm. He’s trying to think of how to word this, and she lets him. Doesn’t cut him off this time like she did in her apartment. “What happened. In the woods. I wish you hadn’t been there. Woulda been easier.”

“I know.”

“But it’s done.”

“Yeah. It’s done. And that’s okay. I get it, you know. Why you burned that house down. Why you stayed hidden. You don’t want to be Frank Castle. You want to be the Punisher. And it’s easier when there’s no one in your life who knows both sides.” A grunt. He’s agreeing, but he doesn’t like it. It’s too close. She feels a little like a fisherman: reeling, but not too fast. “But that’s the thing, Frank. Punisher? Frank Castle? I don’t care _who_ you are. I know you. I’m here. And I’m not going anywhere.”

“Yeah, no shit you aren’t,” Frank grumbles, pulling the thread tight again, jabbing the needle through again.

“You know what I mean.”

He glances up at her reluctantly.

“Yeah. I know what you mean.”

She wants to kiss him, she realizes. Which would be the stupidest thing she could ever do. So she settles for standing up, bending down, and pressing her lips squarely to the side of his head.

It’s really weird.

But she’s already heading for the bathroom, so she doesn’t see the expression she knows he’s making: the one that looks like he’s smelling something bad.

* * *

When she gets out of the bathroom, she sits back across from him. He’s almost done, and she watches, and he seems okay with it now. Seems used to her.

“So am I really under house arrest?” she asks.

“I ain’t gonna tie you up, but I’m gonna go ahead and strongly advise you to stay here, ma’am.”

“You know you don’t have to do that.”

“Do what?”

“Call me ma’am.”

His eyes crinkle at the corners, but she can’t tell if it’s a smile or a grimace.

“All due respect…ma’am? I think I’ll stick with it.”

She laughs, and now he does smile. Snips off the end of the thread, his arm stitched nicely back together.

“Want me to bandage up your back?” she asks. And it’s a totally innocent question, but still she feels her face flushing, because her pale skin and any emotion do not mix. He grunts, pushing his first aid kit across the table towards her, and she takes it with a triumphant smile. “See how convenient it is to have a friend? This would have taken you a while and a lot of pain from those busted ribs to fix on your own.”

“Wouldn’t have been there if you weren’t,” he points out, taking off his shirt. She walks around behind him, angling his table lamp so she can see the rough gouges in his skin.

“Maybe I should be the one warning _you_ to stay away,” she says, close to his skin, her breath warming him, and she pretends not to notice the way his shoulders tense in something that might be a shiver.

“You’re a bad influence I guess,” he says, and it’s a genuine fucking struggle not to run her fingers through his hair.

* * *

The thing about Frank Castle, at least as he relates to her, is that there’s a power she has over him that makes her feel safer than she ever has. Where at first there was fear, now there’s only understanding. Frank would not hurt her. Would never. Would probably rather cut off his own arm.  She’s _someone_ to him, and even if she wasn’t, she would be protected, because Frank doesn’t hurt people who don’t deserve it. Though killing James Wesley haunts her, and what happened back home haunts her, she knows Frank and she knows his moral code, and she knows that though she may think that she deserves punishment for the bad things she has done, Frank would not.

Frank looks at her, and it’s hard to tell what he sees, but she knows it’s good. She helped him remember. She believed in him. She talked to him like he was more than a monster. She woke something in him that was dead and buried before she came along, and she takes that responsibility seriously.

She looks at Frank and no longer sees her own reflection. No, it’s more than that. She sees him, the man, reluctant to feel anything warm and good but unable to turn away. Matt might have mastered the art of letting go, but Frank is a novice and she knows he wishes he was better at it.

But he isn’t.

And that’s important.

* * *

“Are you going out again?” she asks when he’s cleaning himself off at the bathroom sink. She’s leaning in the doorway like this is a normal fucking thing, and maybe it is. They’ve been at this for months now, reintroducing their friendship slowly, both of them being so careful not to push anything, but the dam has to break soon. He’s her friend, even if he won’t actually say the word, and she thinks this _should_ be normal. Sure, Frank Castle isn’t Matt or Foggy. Isn’t comfortably drunk and laughing over a game of pool or ordering takeout and passing out on her couch in the middle of a long existential conversation about right and wrong. That doesn’t mean she has to keep her distance or that they have to be all business. Back at the diner, before the woods, she felt comfortable with him. Even after he used her as bait and beat a man to death not ten feet from her, she still knew that his intentions were good. She thought she was an _idiot_ for still caring, but she couldn’t deny that she did. The next step, if they hadn’t done and said the things they did in the woods, would have been this, right? Closer. Closer.

“Not tonight,” he says, and he doesn’t seem agitated or irritated the way she would think. “Too risky. She’s out there somewhere. I wasn’t followed, but I don’t want to risk her picking me up out there. She’ll be licking her wounds. If she’s anything like I think she is, she’ll want another shot as soon as she can.”

Karen thinks of the vibrating energy that Elektra represented, sitting on her couch.

“Yeah,” she says. “I think you’re right. You don’t have a TV. What do you even do on your nights in?”

He shrugs like the idea never occurred to him.

“Read some,” he says, and she thinks of the copy of her article tucked in his drawer. Looks down at her feet.

“Well, as exciting as I’m sure your taste in books is, I might just go to sleep. Long day.”

“Long day,” Frank agrees, and he turns off the sink.

Maybe one day she’ll be brave enough to cross the gulf between them, reach for him. Kiss him. Wrap up in his arms. Maybe one day she’ll do it, and maybe one day he’ll let her. It’s a nice thought. But it’s not today.

“Goodnight, Frank,” she says.

“Goodnight.”

* * *

Karen still doesn’t like black coffee, but Frank’s not offering any cream or sugar, and she accepts it the same as she accepts everything else about him: she kind of thinks he belongs in prison for it, but she lets him bring her a mug and she lets herself smile at him to thank him.

“Elektra,” she says when he sits down at the table across from her. He hands her an ice pack for her face, and she wonders what it looks like. She hasn’t looked in a mirror yet this morning. Kind of forgot Elektra punched her. “She didn’t seem to be under her own power.”

“Mm?” A grunt. A question.

“She said she worked for a few different people, but she was also beholden to someone. Not making her own calls. I wonder who that is.”

“Red got any clue, you think?”

“I don’t know. He still hasn’t called me back.”

Foggy had, earlier this morning. She let it go to voicemail. Spiteful. Selfish.

“Well, I can ask some, but this seems more Red’s problem to handle and ours to avoid.”

_Ours_. She refuses to read any deeper into that.

“She came after _me_ , remember. And anyway, it’s news, Frank. It’s all my problem.”

Another grunt, this one a reluctant affirmative. She’s getting good at reading them.

“Bullseye and Elektra. Any idea what they want with Red?”

“No. But it has to be related to Kingpin. Whatever other angle Elektra is working, Bullseye isn’t part of it. He’s strictly Kingpin-hired. That’s the impression I got from our conversation. And Matt is supposed to die _eventually_. But first, they want a conversation. I think Kingpin wants to hire Matt.”

“That’s why they wanted you.”

“Insurance, Elektra said.”

“Seems a bit much. Altar boy would do it to rescue _anyone_. Didn’t need to be specific.”

“Maybe,” Karen concedes. She knows she means a lot to Matt, but she also knows Frank’s right that Matt would do anything for a lot of people. “So maybe it’s something bigger. Something they know Matt wouldn’t do unless he felt like he _really_ had to.”

“Killing,” Frank decides. Looks at Karen with something like worry. Not for himself, or for her, but for Matt. “That’s his…thing. His line. What he doesn’t want to cross.”

“You’re right. I think you’re right. They want him to kill someone.”

“Who needs to die so bad you gotta hire a goddamn blind Catholic ninja vigilante?” Frank wonders. Begins to clean his gun. And the puzzle pieces all slide into place. Lock into one another.

“Another vigilante,” she says, and when he looks up, she knows he gets it. “They’re gonna try to get him to kill _you_.”

His frown deepens, and he leans back in his chair to think about it. She lets him, though she knows she’s right. And eventually he comes to the same conclusion and gives a weary nod.

“And Elektra knows we know each other now,” he says dryly.

“We need to tell Matt.”

“Girl scout,” he says, but it’s halfway between scorn and admiration, and he doesn’t argue.

* * *

Karen’s not sure how Frank gets around during the day, because the whole way to Matt’s place, she doesn’t see him. Just keeps walking, Max’s leash in her hand, trying to look casual in a pair of Frank’s sweatpants and a hoodie. But she knows he’s there, because he said he would be there, and she believes him.

Matt’s apartment has always been such a safe place for her, and it still feels like it as she makes her way up to his door. There’s a moment when she isn’t sure if he’ll even be there, but then she knocks, and she can hear him moving around. She’s so relieved she almost cries. She settles for scratching Max behind the ears.

Matt looks distinctly unimpressed when he opens the door.

“Why do you have Frank’s dog?” he asks.

“He needed to be walked, and I needed a buddy,” Karen replies. “Can I come in?”

“Something happened.”

“Something big. And I want you to be prepared for it.”

Matt lets her in – she knew he would. He offers her something to drink, but she waves it off, and she sits down on his couch, trying to think of the right words.

Finally, she just settles on, “Elektra is alive.”

She does feel a pang of guilt. She knows Elektra would rather tell him herself, but Elektra also threatened her and tried to kill Frank, so. Fair play, probably.

Matt sits down hard next to her, his breath coming out of his lungs like he’s squeezing them out, wringing them between both hands.

“How do you…how do you know about…?”

“She told me,” Karen says. She keeps scratching Max’s ears for comfort, and it gives her the strength to look at him when she talks. “She seemed surprised you hadn’t mentioned her to me. Guess she’s a little more honest than you.”

Matt huffs a laugh and says, “that was a low blow, Karen. And you must not have talked for _that_ long if you think there’s anything honest about her.”

“Sorry. I’m just…being a jerk.”

_Scared_ , she could have said. _Unsure of what to do. Floundering. Drowning._

“It’s okay. You’re sure it was her?”

“I’m sure. I recognized her from when she was, uh. Wearing your pajamas.”

“I buried her.”

“So she said. And I guess someone unburied her. She’s working for the Kingpin now, but she’s also working for some other people. She said they’re using her for a war she doesn’t understand, or maybe it was ‘care about’, I don’t remember. Does that make any sense to you?”

“Yeah. Uh. It’s called The Hand. She’s something called the Black Sky. It’s…complicated.”

“The kind of complicated that might lead to a magical resurrection?”

“They’ve done it before. Or they claim to have. I only _know_ that they’re strong. And apparently everywhere.”

“And dangerous?”

“They killed her the first time. They’re the ones who took you.”

“Oh.”

“Someone’s coming,” Matt says suddenly, and Max stands up at the same time, but his tail is wagging.

“Is it Frank?” Karen asks. Matt listens. Nods. Relaxes again. Karen releases Max so he can greet Frank at the door. “What happened to you last night? You’re jumpier than usual. And Elektra said she set up a ‘distraction’ for you. Whatever that means.”

“She did that?”

“Had a hand in it, anyway,” Karen says, shrugging. “She was with me at the time.” The door opens without a knock, Frank stepping in. “Everything okay?”

“No one followed you,” Frank replies. “You tell him yet?”

“I’m…in the process.”

“You tell him what she wanted to do to you?”

“Um…no. Not yet.”

Matt’s face falls, and he leans heavily back against the couch.

“Shit. Elektra…”

“I know. It’s pretty bad. She said she would have to cut off a few of my fingers to send you if you didn’t cooperate with Bullseye last night. I think she was _mostly_ joking, but Frank doesn’t agree.”

“That’s…she wouldn’t….” Matt starts, then sighs. Throws up his hands in frustration. “Maybe she would! I don’t know. I thought she finally got it.”

“Got what?”

“That she didn’t have to kill people. Hurt people. That she could be good.”

“So it’s not just me you spoonfeed that bullshit to?” Frank asks, crossing his arms over his chest.

“No,” Matt says, a ghost of a smile on his tired face. “No, I give it to all the people who see murder as a solution.”

“Here I thought I was special.”

“Matt, what happened last night?” Karen asks, knowing he’s stalling, and he deflates again.

“There was a shootout down by the docks. Yakuza and I guess Kingpin’s men. There was a ship unloading at the time. Late to port, bunch of innocent workers trapped on board while they waited to see who would win the fight and take the cargo.”

“Did you save them?”

“Yeah.”

“Saved the shooters, too,” Frank mutters.

“He was there. Bullseye. But I was faster than him. Barely. He earned the name.”

“I noticed,” Karen and Frank say in unison, equally deadpan.

“He got a call when I was hiding from him. He was getting too close. I was hoping to draw him into the warehouse, knock out the lights, but he took off.”

“Must’ve got a call from her once she got away from me,” Frank says.

“Did she hurt you?” Matt asks Karen.

“Bruised my face, but not too badly. She got Frank pretty good when he held her off so I could escape.” Matt makes a face that says he doesn’t really care about Frank, but it’s not in bad humor, and Frank lets out a bit of a laugh. Karen does too, though hers sounds as stretched thin as she feels. “Anyway, we were talking this morning, and we think we know what Kingpin wants: he wants to kill Frank. He wants _you_ to kill Frank.”

Frank cuts in with, “probably figures you almost got me once. Maybe third time’s the charm, right? Or fourth, fifth. Whatever we’re on now.”

“But what does Elektra have to do with that?”

“She was there to babysit me,” Karen says, a little scornfully. Still feeling the sting of Elektra’s betrayal after what had started out as such a nice conversation. “Take me if she had to. Use me to provide you adequate motivation to get the job done. And now that Frank played the hero and rescued me…”

“She knows you’re important to him, too.”

She half expects Frank to have something to say to that diagnosis – _important_ being much more defined than anything he’s admitted to so far – and her heart goes all annoyingly warm and soft when he doesn’t.

“I’m thinking… _we_ are thinking you should meet with Bullseye,” Karen says slowly. “With Frank watching. Just in case.”

“Just like back on the roof,” Frank points out. Letting Matt know: _it’s nothing you haven’t already done before, letting me kill for you._

“If you don’t, they’ll keep coming. At least with me, I’m protected. But if they go after Brett, after Foggy…Elektra said they were looking for Claire. Maybe they won’t find her, but maybe they will. Meanwhile, I can keep digging into this Kingpin thing…”

“Karen,” Matt sighs, while Frank lets out a grunt of disappointed disapproval.

“Whoever Elektra is working for, they want her to kill Kingpin face to face. If I can get her the name, she can finish her real mission, and she can stop working with Bullseye. If she doesn’t have to prove her loyalty, she won’t.”

Frank asks, “and how you gonna find that out? Ain’t that simple. We’ve been working on this for a long while now. Nothin’. Nobody knows who he is.”

“Or they’re just not willing to tell _you_ ,” Matt says. Karen’s pretty sure Matt can _feel_ the disdainful look that Frank sends his way.

“They. Don’t. Know,” Frank says, his tone even and steady and sure. Implying an awful lot.

“I’m inclined to trust Frank on this one. Some of the crime scene photos…I think they’d talk.”

“Dammit, Frank,” Matt sighs. “This is…not okay. None of this.”

He doesn’t have to address Karen directly. She knows he means to ( _you can put up with this, Karen? How could you? He’s a murderer_ ). She still feels the sting of his judgement even as she resists it. Frank steps a little closer, eyebrows lowered, expression stormy.

“If it keeps her and me alive and keeps them from doin’ to anyone else the things they planned to do to her? I don’t give a fuck what you think, Red.”

Which is a great time for Foggy to say, “um” from the doorway.

“Jesus!” Karen exclaims, the only one surprised. “A little warning! Either of you!” and she sends a little glare Max’s way for good measure, but the dog doesn’t care. He trots happily up to the newcomer, who pulls the door the rest of the way open like it’s the last thing he wants to do. Everything about him speaks of a bone-deep exhaustion with this whole thing, and he barely even knows what it’s about yet.

“Well, at least you’re alive, I guess,” he says to Karen, who rolls her eyes as she stands up.

“Oh, don’t give me that. I told you I was safe.”

“You said you weren’t sure you’d been followed.”

“And you said ‘take care of yourself, Karen’, and hung up, and didn’t try calling me ‘til the morning.”

Foggy cringes a little at that, but doesn’t respond. Just steps further into the room and looks around.

“Gang’s all here, I guess,” he says. It’s weird to see him in casual clothes. Every time Karen has seen him lately, he’s been wearing a suit. A real suit. A nice one. Nicer than everything he used to own put together.

“What are you doing here?” Matt asks.

“Well, Karen’s apartment looked like a warzone, she wasn’t at her office, and neither of you were answering my calls, so what the hell was I supposed to do? Seriously…okay. Whose dog is this? This dog is awesome.”

“It’s Frank’s dog,” Karen answers, because Frank’s just looking at Foggy in the unimpressed, wrinkled-forehead way he has, watching Foggy try to still look annoyed while petting a very enthusiastic Max.

“That…makes sense. Uh. Great dog, Frank.”

Frank just continues to stare, arms still folded across his chest.

“He is,” Karen says to fill the silence. “Um, actually, now that you’re here, why don’t you sit down? You should know about this too.”

“I don’t know if we should…” Matt says, but Karen glares his way, incredulous.

“We aren’t keeping secrets anymore,” she says, and her tone is too sharp, too serious. She feels guilty for it, for reminding Matt so viscerally that he has ruined both friendships with lies, with secrets like this one.

“If he doesn’t want me to know, forget it. I don’t want to know. Nice to see you guys. And dog.”

“Foggy, wait!” Karen says, but when he actually stops, actually turns to look at her, she doesn’t know what to say. “I want you to stay. I want you to know. Doesn’t that count for something?”

Laying it on a little thick, but she’s not even entirely exaggerating the sadness in her tone. It’s always been Matt and Foggy, with her somewhere behind them. That was inevitable, and she didn’t resent it or mind it. They had known each other for so long! How could she? But it gets hard to accept now, when she’s trying desperately to hold on to her relationships with both of them, and neither seem to want to if the other isn’t there.

It makes her feel so, so lonely. So alone and unwanted and unloved. There was a too-short time when she actually felt like she had a place in the city. Had a place in the lives of two friends, for the first time since she left Vermont. But that’s been over now for so long that she almost forgets what it was like.

“Of course that counts for something,” Foggy sighs, but he still hesitates for a minute before he sits down next to her, like she’s a buffer between he and Matt. “Okay, so…what are we dealing with here?”

Karen’s the one who explains it. She does it quietly, carefully, with no frills or over-explanation to try and word her way around things. She admits her recent friendship with Frank, admits using his leads and his help, and she admits getting involved in the Kingpin stuff. But she looks at Foggy with a straightforwardness when she says it, hoping not to overwhelm the guy too much. She tells him what they know and what they think they know. Foggy, to his credit, takes it all in stride, listens and doesn’t judge with anything except an ever-alarmed expression. When she pauses, he asks questions and accepts the answers. He’s holding his briefcase in his lap, basically clutching it. Like a reminder that he has another life outside all of this. He can leave here and not have to look back. Not have to be around these people and this superhero bullshit. It isn’t that she doesn’t understand. But goddamn is it hard not to resent a little.

But he seems to relax as she talks, and he’s looking at her with ideas in his eyes the way he used to when they were working together all the time on Frank’s case, just the two of them.

“Kingpin,” he says when she’s finished. “I might have a line on him.”

“You do?”

“Client of mine used to run with the, uh…” he glances at Frank, who looms over this conversation like an avenging angel. “Let’s just say a less-than-savory crowd.”

“Frank’s not going to kill your client, Foggy. Right, Frank?”

“Not right this second,” Frank says. Foggy actually laughs at that, though it’s strangled and disbelieving. He’s trying. Karen appreciates that.

“Well, I’m glad to hear it, but I’d still rather keep it close to the chest. That being said, he has a hookup with Kingpin. I can maybe get him to agree to meet with you. With _you_ , Karen.”

He looks pointedly at her, and she nods, understanding. From the annoyed grunt behind her, Frank understands too, but he doesn’t say anything. He’s trying too.

“I’ll do it,” she says. “As soon as you can. We need Elektra off our backs.”

“She’s crazy. You know that, right? Like, she’s insane. She’s an insane ex. Tell her, Matt.”

“She didn’t seem all that crazy,” Karen says stubbornly. Defensively.

“She also might not be herself.” This from Matt, who looks reluctant. Worried. “And even when she _is_ herself, she’s unpredictable. And you want to hand her a loaded gun and point her at Kingpin.”

Even more defensive now, Karen says: “Kingpin, who hired _two_ assassins to kill you _and_ probably Frank so he can take over the city without worrying about anyone getting in his way.”

“I can’t believe we’re having this conversation. Again,” Matt says, and she knows he’s thinking of the disastrous non-date where she ended up on the curb for saying maybe Frank was right. Hard not to think of that now, with Frank standing so nearby. With her wearing his clothes.

“Me neither,” she says back. And she doesn’t waver when she looks at him. And her heartbeat is steady enough to send a message.

“Tell you what,” Frank says, moving forward, closer to the couch. When she looks at him, he inclines his head only slightly, and somehow she knows that means it’s time to go. She stands up, shoving her hands deep into the front pocket of the hoodie. “How ‘bout your old lady and I race to the Kingpin. Maybe I can beat her there. Save you all the trouble of feelin’ guilty about whatever it is you’re feelin’ guilty about.”

“Not a good idea, Frank,” Matt says.

“Yeah, I actually…it’s not gonna be that easy,” Foggy agrees. “I’ve been hearing his name _a lot_ lately. Elektra would have at least the advantage of not being one of his targets. If Kingpin wants you dead…”

“Lotta people wanted me dead. Guess where most of ‘em ended up?”

“He’s different.” Foggy doesn’t back down, and Frank gives a grudging nod.

Karen looks thoughtfully between them, and finally works up the courage to say, “So…look. I know this might be a dumb suggestion. But if I give her a name. A place. Maybe the two of you can work together. Matt, if you don’t want to be involved, you don’t have to be.”

Matt gives her a pretty impressive stink-eye from behind his glasses.

“It’s not about not wanting to be involved. It’s about…”

A heavy, torturous sigh. And she gets it. She does. Thinks often about how much easier all this would be if she didn’t.

“I know what it’s about,” she says, sitting down again briefly to take his hand. Squeezes his fingers. “But I’m telling you, Matt. When a wasp is buzzing around your head and you keep swatting it away, eventually it’s going to sting you. Unless you get rid of it before it can.”

“We aren’t talking about wasps, Karen.”

“And we aren’t talking about bee stings, either. We’re talking about my life. Frank’s life. Foggy’s. Claire’s. Elektra’s _second_ life, or whatever. Bullseye and Kingpin are killing who _knows_ how many people, and I…” she struggles to find the words, clinging to Matt even though she knows that it’s hopeless, that he won’t understand. “I know how you feel. But that doesn’t mean it’s the only way to feel, Matt. And I- I feel differently. Not always. Not all the time, but sometimes. Killing this man won’t make anyone a monster. Killing this man will make someone, to me…it’ll make them a hero. I get that it’s easy for you. You things so- so starkly. And that’s okay. I did once too. Black and white. Right and wrong. But you start bringing gradations into it, and it’s…I can see it, Matt. I can embrace the gray. And I’m _going_ to. I’ve been trying for so long to stay _good_ , what I thought was good. What _you_ think is good. Your opinion means a lot to me. It has, always, ever since I met you. And I wanted to be good for you. You asked me to tell the truth, and I lied, and you knew it, but you helped me anyway. But if you ever thought I was anything other than this, than someone…broken? You were only seeing what you wanted to.”

“An awful lot of sight metaphors to give a blind man,” Matt says, a little sadly, but he smiles. It’s reluctant. Wary. Disillusioned. And that’s the rub of it: there was an illusion there. An illusion that she was something she tried so hard to be. Maybe it’s sweet, in a way, that he believed it was possible.

“You’re a smart guy. I think you can figure it out,” Karen says with a grin. And Matt laughs. Fond, but understanding.

What she doesn’t say is that Matt was going to run away with Elektra. That Matt was going to leave for Elektra, and now Elektra is back. Karen Page did a lot of loving Matt Murdock, so she knows what it looks like to love him. She knows what it feels like to love him. And she knows that she doesn’t love him the way Elektra does.

It’s sad. It makes her sad in a tender, soft kind of way. But it’s not the end of the world. And if there’s a way to help Elektra, to get her out of a situation where she might have to do something that would hurt Matt, then Karen’s going to do whatever it takes to get them all out of this mess as cleanly as she can.


	8. I Needed to Say it. And it Needed to be You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Karen and Foggy meet with Foggy's client and learn some startling news, which Frank is less than thrilled about.

 

Back in her apartment, Karen takes in the bloodstains on her wall, on her new carpet, on her couch. All very familiar. This part feels like a natural progression, too. Like, where else was she going to go from ‘bullet-riddled apartment’ but to ‘blood-covered apartment’.

“Goddammit, Frank,” she says, and he looks a little sheepish as he stands in the kitchen.

“You’re still breathing, right?” he says, defensive, and she scoffs. Foggy looks around in a kind of awe.

“Man, what did you _do_ to her?”

“Mostly it’s what she did to me. Woman is a wildcat.”

“You should have seen what she did to his back,” Karen agrees, holding up her fingers, bent like claws.

“Yeah, actually? Not surprising. She did the same thing to Matt in college, though at least _they_ both enjoyed it.”

“No one called the police. I’m surprised,” Karen says, mostly to change the subject, and Frank makes a humming sound. A disgruntled agreement.

“Are you? This isn’t exactly the best neighborhood,” Foggy says in the same way he says it every time now that he’s in a higher socioeconomic bracket and can afford to think about things like nice neighborhoods.

“Ain’t the worst,” Frank says. “But…no. Not surprising no one called the police. Anyway, Kingpin’s got a lot of pull, so…might be they called it in. Might be it just never reached who it was supposed to.”

“Great. _That_ kind of case,” Foggy says, barking out a laugh. “I shouldn’t be here.”

“None of us should be,” Frank grumbles, and at least he and Foggy are bonding, kind of, so Karen lets it go.

“Matt’s watching us,” she says, waving her hand like that’s fine, like that doesn’t bother her ninety percent of the time. “And Foggy, no one knows Frank is here. No one’s _going_ to know.”

“We don’t have attorney-client privilege anymore, Karen. And he’s a wanted fugitive!”

“I know. Believe me, you get used to it.”

“I should get outta here anyway,” Frank says with a grimace. “I got somethin’ to take care of.”

“You want Max?”

“Keep him.”

He hands her his keys without a word, pats the dog on the head, and leaves through her bedroom window. Foggy gives her a look like he’s dying to say something, but he just shakes his head.

“At least he left the dog,” Karen says teasingly, which gets a reluctant laugh from Foggy.

“Whatever,” he says. “Pack your things. Come on.”

* * *

Foggy’s client is surprisingly okay with meeting. Eager to negotiate a better deal. Foggy tries to explain it’s kind of off the record, but the ex-gangster agrees anyway. Says he’ll head to Foggy’s office.

The man’s name is Larson Miller, Foggy explains, and he’s an ex-con. Ran with the Dogs of Hell for a while, but got out after The Punisher started cleaning house. His family, he decided, was more important than his life of crime.

A pang of guilt at that. But Karen pushes it down. Frank is not her fault. This is not her fault. Frank and Larson both make their own decisions.

“Good call, not telling Frank about him,” she admits.

“Will you?”

“If he asks, I’ll tell him I can’t tell him anything,” she says. “I won’t lie to him.”

She says it pointedly enough that Fogy nods, understanding her reluctance to taint another friendship the way Matt tainted both of his.

“This is so messed up,” he says, but he takes Max’s leash when they leave.

* * *

Between her several bags and the pitbull, getting across town to Foggy’s office is kind of a nightmare. She’s worried about bringing the dog to the building, but Foggy pulls rank and with this weird, surprising confidence manages to convince the security guards to let him take Max in.

“Foggy, you’re kind of cool now, aren’t you?” she asks as they squeeze Max into the elevator with them.

“Well, that’s pretty insulting. I thought you thought I was cool from the beginning,” Foggy says, and Karen laughs, leaning her shoulder up against his. She missed this.

“I thought I was so good at hiding it,” she says back.

Larson is already there when Karen and Foggy walk into Foggy’s office. Foggy’s assistant is a willowy brunette woman with sparkling eyes and a chipper smile, and she introduces herself as a “big fan” of Karen’s articles. Larson already seemed sold on the idea of a reporter using him as an anonymous source, but now that he knows she has _fans_ , he gets very eager, very courteous. He’s an older white guy, maybe in his late forties, handsome, but he dresses and talks like a teenager, albeit a surprisingly polite teenager.

“I hope I can give you what you need,” he says, refreshingly free of the usual leer that accompanies that kind of line from her sources.

“I hope so too. I just want to reiterate that none of this is going to be on the record. Anything you tell me, you’ll be treated as any other anonymous source.”

“That’s good to hear. What I’m telling you now, I could be killed just for knowing it.”

“I understand. I won’t publish any of the information you tell me is too dangerous for you.”

“Yeah?” he seems doubtful.

She smiles at him, folds her arms in front of her on the table, fingers clasped together. Wants to look as trustworthy as she possibly can.

“I’ll be honest, Mr. Miller. This isn’t for a story.” She holds up her still-bandaged palm. “Kingpin has been the focus of my latest investigation, and as you can see, he’s trying to keep me off his trail.”

“Jesus. He stabbed you?”

“In a way. And it wasn’t him, obviously. One of his cronies.”

“Yeah, right. He doesn’t do anything himself. Can’t. One of my cellmates was the one who told me what he does.”

“Your cellmate?”

“Yeah. I just got out a few weeks ago. Looper. He was one of Kingpin’s guys inside. That’s the thing. I know you guys were involved in all of this, back in the beginning. I remember your names, see? But it isn’t surprising you don’t know.”

“Mr. Miller, please. I’m afraid for my life. I need to know who he is so I can work on getting him put away.”

“That’s what I’m _saying_ , lady. He’s already there.”

“Fuck,” Foggy says suddenly. “Oh, fuck. It’s Fisk, isn’t it? Kingpin is Wilson Fisk.”

Miller sighs, runs his hand over his head, looks sick.

“Hey, man. You didn’t hear it from me, right?”

“ _Fuck_ ,” Foggy says again.

* * *

Okay, so. Kingpin is Wilson Fisk. That’s why he never meets with anyone. That’s why he’s so hard for Karen’s sources to get a read on: he’s not actually out there.

Karen is very familiar with the kind of loyalty Wilson Fisk can inspire. She’s familiar with the amount of damage the man can do without ever getting his fingerprints on something. So it makes sense that he would have the pull to hire Elektra and Bullseye to try and clear a path for himself. So that when he gets out, there’s no one in his way.

And she knows, even before she starts looking into it, that she won’t find anything to tie Fisk to the activities that have been performed in his alter ego’s name. Foggy knows it too. After their meeting with Larson Miller, he breaks out a bottle of scotch. Good stuff. Hands her the whole bottle.

“A little early for this,” she says, taking a swig from it.

“A little early in my life to be planning my best friend’s funeral, too, and yet here we are.”

“We knew it was coming. Daredevil was instrumental in getting him in there. When he got out, he was always going to…”

“Yeah. I got it. Really, I do. Doesn’t mean I have to like it.”

“No.”

“You’re with me though, right? At least on the total fatalism front? This is about more than just Fisk wanting to take out The Punisher and Daredevil, isn’t it?

“You don’t know how badly I want to say no, but we _were_ involved. It might not be _totally_ coincidental.”

“Should I be worried?”

She’s surprised at the vulnerability in his voice, and when she looks at him, she sees that he’s got this awful look on his face, like he’s been punched in the stomach and can’t breathe.

She knows exactly what it is. It’s what she felt when she looked down at her bloody hands, at the knife, when she realized that leaving Vermont, leaving everything behind, wasn’t enough to save her, because death had still followed. Foggy thought leaving Nelson and Murdock would be enough. That a nice apartment, a real paycheck, a real suit and a real office, that all of that would be enough to save him from the dangers that came with their old lives.

But it wasn’t. Of course it wasn’t.

“Yeah,” she says. “I think so.”

“Great.”

“We should have been worried this whole time,” she says, taking another sharp swig. Max whines at her, and she reaches down and pets him, needing him. “I can ask Frank to add your apartment building to his nightly rounds. I know Matt already…”

“I don’t think so,” Foggy says. She’s a little surprised. She thought maybe his fear would drive him to accept. But she understands. Nothing she says can convince him that Frank isn’t a monster. Just like nothing he says can convince her he is.

* * *

Their reactions are predictable. The bags under Matt’s eyes, the thin set of his mouth, everything becomes more defined as he thinks about Fisk and how this is all, somehow, probably solely his own fault.

Frank fumes. Paces.

“I had my goddamn chance,” he growls. “I was in there, and I had my chance, and I told him _next time_.”

He glares at Matt as if this is all his fault. Digs his fingernails into his palms because he knows it’s not.

Everyone does so much blaming themselves, and it’s not that Karen doesn’t understand, but she’s actually feeling pretty optimistic now that they know what they’re looking for. But she doesn’t mention Fisk, doesn’t mention Elektra, doesn’t mention that they might have to adjust the plan if Fisk is in a place where Elektra can’t get to him. Just lets them have their moment. Meanwhile, she puts her mind to work whirling over the possibilities.

She knows that Matt will help if they need him, but she also knows he doesn’t want to. Doesn’t want to face Fisk, doesn’t want to have to use Elektra and Frank to kill a man because to him, that will be the same as killing the man himself. Maybe she can understand now why he kept things from her. Maybe she can understand how it feels noble to insist on that hard line between Good and Bad, and how it felt noble for Matt to keep her out of it.

She still thinks that Fisk has to die.

* * *

“What’re you thinking?” Frank asks as they walk side-by-side down the street. They decide to walk to his place without discussion, and Frank takes the leash from her and one of her bags. It’s a cool, clear evening, and there are few enough people on the streets that it doesn’t feel crowded. Their shoulders brush together when they walk, and neither of them move away when it happens.  Neither of them let it be uncomfortable. It’s nice. Karen hates that it’s nice. They’re talking about a guy who came very close to having Karen killed once upon a time, and now he’s trying again. She shouldn’t feel warm and safe just because of who’s walking beside her, but she _does_. And it’s the freaking _Punisher_.

“Thinking of how to reach out to Elektra,” she admits. “Not sure how to get her attention, but I’m sure I could. Maybe post something in the Bulletin. Hope she reads it. It’s gonna be tough for her to get to him.”

“He’s strong, too. Not gonna be easy for anyone to take him down. Not even her.”

“You sound like you’re speaking from experience. He rough you up a little after you told him _next time_?”

“Kind of. He’s the one who let me out of prison.”

“After you killed those prisoners?” She can’t believe they’ve never talked about this, that Fisk has never before come up between them.

“Those prisoners tried to kill me. All part of Fisk’s setup. Didn’t work out so well for him, obviously. He let me go after. Not before beating the shit out of me.”

“Your face was one big bruise,” she remembers. “I wondered.”

“Never asked.”

“Seemed rude. And I was a little preoccupied. And then…” She shrugs, thinking of _you’re dead to me_. She knows they covered it the first time they spoke after all those months apart, but it still festers between them, she thinks. Maybe that she said it, or maybe that she said it because she wanted the truth, and Frank still hasn’t offered to tell her.

“Teaming up with her, taking Kingpin down, ain’t gonna work now,” Frank says, glossing over the rest, and she nods.

“Yeah.”

“So we’re back to nothing.”

“I can expose him.”

But she can’t. She knows it. As much as she wants the truth, Larson Miller would suffer for it if she so much as hinted at an anonymous source.

“He’ll be coming for you.”

“Yeah. Think he will.”

“Got vacation time?”

“I’m not hiding out in your apartment until all this goes away, Frank.”

“Yeah. Figured that’d be too easy.”

He doesn’t look at her for a while, but when he finally does, he looks pained. It’s gone quickly, but she sees it. She understands it. Frank Castle was dead, and he was happy to be that way. But he made the call to get help at her apartment, and then she wouldn’t let him melt back into the night the way he’d planned, and now she’s here, always reminding him. He was grateful the first time she helped him remember. But now she’s in danger, and he gives a shit. She doubts he’s so grateful to her now.

“I can maybe find a way to connect Kingpin and Fisk. Make it look like I did the digging myself,” she says. But she doubts it. Mostly she just wants to say something. Knowing how Frank is feeling seems too close, too private.

“Think that’d be worth it?”

“Maybe not. But what else are we gonna do?”

He hums a little at that, agreeing.

“We don’t have to decide anything right now,” he reminds her. “Been a long couple days.”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah.”

We. _We_. They both said it, but it’s like she’s on a bit of a delay, and now she’s embarrassed. We. How quickly they became a unit. Just like after her apartment was attacked, after he broke out of prison. She got into her car with him and she went to the diner with him, and it was _we_. Even after he killed those men in the diner, it was _we_. _We can figure this out_. Now it’s _we_ again, and she’s not sure how she feels about it. She was so hurt last time. So alone in the woods. She’s not sure she can do that again. Not when every moment that passes burns more bridges between she and Matt and she and Foggy because they will never understand what she sees in Frank. In The Punisher.

“It is ‘we’, right?” she asks. “We’re in this together?”

A little needier than she wanted to sound, but he’s not exactly one for teasing. He shrugs, looks annoyed.

“You see me running?” he asks.

“No. You’re not running. But I’m making this choice. This is what I want. Kingpin and Bullseye are dangerous, and I think you’re right. I just don’t want to be left alone in this again.”

She looks at him until he looks back. Meets her eye. Stops walking in the middle of the deserted sidewalk. His mouth is a little twisted.

“How ‘bout you?” he asks. He can tell she doesn’t get the question; usually, she follows his seeming verbal non-sequiturs, but this one eludes her. “You’re the one who ran last time. Not me.”

It’s a good point.

“I’m not going anywhere,” she says.

“And if I say you should?”

“I’d say you’re right, but I’d also tell you to stop being so predictable.” He grunts a little, a flash of a smile that he hides by ducking his face, basking it in the shadow of the brim of his baseball cap. “I’m with you, Frank. That okay?”

“Yes ma’am. That’s okay. If you’re sure.”

“I’m sure.”

Saying the words is admitting something she’s been holding at bay for a while. It’s not just Frank. It’s not just because of Wesley. But some people, some people deserve to die. Wesley deserved it. He wasn’t threatening her the way Matt would _need_ him to to consider her murder self-defense. He didn’t have the gun to her head. But he threatened her friends and family. And he would have hurt them if he could. And so she killed him.

It was self-defense. Maybe the law wouldn’t agree. Maybe Matt wouldn’t agree. But you know what? They’re wrong.

It’s a commitment she never thought she would make. And she doesn’t like it. She wants to be _better_ than it. But sometimes you just have to accept your nature, and hers is telling her that she agrees with Frank Castle. Not all the time. Not completely. And she’ll never be okay with torture. But sometimes. And sometimes is enough.

“It’s a big mistake,” he says.

“Not my first,” she replies.

“You’ll be in danger. Don’t give me that look. I know you’re already in danger. I’m just sayin’. And I ain’t gonna stop. Not for you. Not for anyone.”

“I don’t want you to stop.” He narrows his eyes at her, and she says, “I mean it. I don’t want to hear the details. I don’t want to _help_ you or anything. But I don’t want you to stop. You’re…you’re a necessary evil. And you’re my friend. I wouldn’t still be here if I didn’t at least _kind of_ believe in what you’re doing, Frank.”

He watches her for a long time. Looks away. Turns his gaze back on her as Max whines and tugs on the leash.

“Okay,” he finally says.

They start walking again, but he made her think of Wesley, and so she reaches out and grabs his arm. Just gently, just enough to grip the fabric of his jacket and pull him to a stop again.

“Wait. I killed someone, Frank.”

He darts a look around the street, but she did that already; she’s not an idiot. They’re alone here. And she’s quiet. He looks her up and down like he’s looking for the bloodstains.

“When?” he asks finally.

“Before I met you. He was one of Fisk’s men. He took me to- to a warehouse. He told me he’d hurt Matt, Foggy, my friends and family, if I didn’t work for him. For Fisk. He took a call and left his gun on the table. I- I shot him with it. I unloaded it.”

“Whoa, whoa, hey,” Frank’s saying, and she realizes she’s babbling, that she’s panicking. Once she started talking, it became like a disease in her or something; she needs to get it out. Frank grips her shoulder tight. Tilts his head up to look her in the eye under the brim of his hat. “Hey, slow down, okay? Why you telling me this?”

“Matt thinks I’m a saint. He’s said it. More than once. _Saint_. Like that’s something I should be proud of. Pure, innocent Karen. And I’ve never told him. I never said a single word. The closest I ever came was telling you I’d used a gun before, remember?”

“Course I remember,” he says quickly, like that’s a stupid question.

“I needed to say it. And it needed to be you. If we’re gonna be in this together, it needed to be you.”

“Okay,” Frank says again. Squeezes her shoulder hard before letting go. “Don’t scare me like that again, fuck.”

“Scare _you_ , huh?” she asks, a relieved laugh bubbling up that sounds suspiciously like a sob about to break.

“Goddamn heart attack. I thought I was gonna have to clean up a fuckin’ crime scene,” Frank says, but he walks closer to her on the way home. And their shoulders bump together more. And he smiles when she catches him watching.

* * *

It’s something she likes about Frank, but she’s frustrated about it too: he doesn’t need to talk things out. He doesn’t need her to explain. He’s perceptive. He understands. She can see him running through her words, figuring out how they fit together. When he nods, she knows it means he understands.

But _does_ he? She looks at him sometimes and wonders if he does actually know what she feels, does actually know what she’s saying, or if he only thinks he does. Maybe he’s wrong. Maybe he misinterprets. And she thinks she follows him too, but what if she doesn’t? She feels like she’s pushing, but she also thinks he’s letting her. Not leading her, not exactly, but letting her set the pace, letting her decide how far they’re going to go.

But what if she pushes too hard? Too fast? What if the pace isn’t what he’s ready for? She’s risking a lot. What if she ruins it?

Careful. She’s careful. But everything in her wants to reach out and pull him closer. She’s so lonely. And that cotton candy, sweet feeling hasn’t left her in a while. She’s not sure what she wants from him. She’s not sure she wants anything. But at the same time, there’s a draw. Something pulling her closer. Something reeling her in. Is he doing it on purpose? God, she wishes she knew.

* * *

His apartment is warmer with some of her stuff at hand. Her laptop. Some clothes. Her gun and her files. Not a lot. Nothing homey or welcoming, but it matters all the same.

She refuses to take the cot this time, saying she’ll get a hotel room if he doesn’t let her take the couch.

“You’re letting me crash at your place, and you’re keeping me safe,” she argues. “That’s polite enough for a lifetime, Frank.”

He grumbles a little, but she won’t back down, and eventually he nods. Doesn’t like it, but he nods.

“I’ll be back later,” he says before he goes, and she watches him strap on his bulletproof vest. Watches him shoulder his big gun.

“I’ll be here,” she responds.

She doesn’t sleep.

It’s not that she’s worried, necessarily, but she needs to write it all down. And she knows she won’t be able to stop _thinking_ anyway. So it’s not worry, not really. It’s vaguely worry- _shaped_ , but it’s more than that. So she sits at her laptop and she writes and she tries to connect the pieces in her head and make them make sense on the page.

Kandahar. Blacksmith. Kingpin. Bullseye. Elektra. The Hand. There’s still so much she doesn’t know. She tries to think of what Ben would do. Would Ben risk as much as she has to reveal these secrets? Would Ben risk his friendships, risk his life to expose them? Yes. Of course he would. But should _she_? She is the reason Ben is dead. She wears that death in a way that makes her murder of Wesley feel like a surface scratch. Should she really be poking at this open wound, risking more lives ended because of her?

She doesn’t make any connections she doesn’t already have, and eventually she gives up, leaning back in her seat and staring across the room at Frank’s wall, the one with the maps and the pictures.

“What do you think, Max?” she asks. The dog wags his tail and pants in her direction. “Yeah, buddy. Me neither.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guys, seriously, thank you so much for reading this. I wasnt sure what to expect after years of not writing fanfic, but this has been so awesome! Seriously, you're the best.


	9. Is that Earth, Wind, and Fire?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Karen stays with Frank while she does some more digging

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just as a warning, this chapter does contain a brief shooting scene in a workplace.

It’s easy to fall into a pattern with Frank. For the next week, she doesn’t go into work. Ellison believes her when she says she’s working on something big. Warns her to be careful. Judges her a little when she promises that she’s safe but also refuses to tell him where she’s staying for his own safety. Every day, she follows up on leads that Foggy manages to get her from Larson Miller or other clients he tells her even less about. She usually doesn’t tell Frank she’s leaving, usually manages to get out when he’s still sleeping, recovering from the night before, but she gets irritated texts from him when he wakes up around noon. She texts him back to let him know she’s okay. Every day.

Every night, she grabs something on her way back to his place. Takeout. He doesn’t like pizza, which is ridiculous, but he’s not picky about anything else. He’s usually getting ready to go when she gets back, but they always clear the guns off the table together and eat while she shows him her notes, tells him whatever she learned. She’s open with him that she’s not telling him everything: there are some leads she wants to investigate, and if he knew about them, he’d do his own _investigating_ , which they both know wouldn’t get her the answers she wants. It’s a kind of pleasant compromise that they can both support.

“Warehouse,” she says on the third day, dropping some photos on top of the small clear space on the table. Her legs are stretched out in front of her, ankles crossed, feet just inches from his left boot. She can feel it bouncing as he flips through them. He gets like this; anxious to be out there. Relieve the symptoms of his injury by imparting injuries on others. 

“What is it?”

“Front. A, uh, drug thing. Not Kingpin’s exclusively, though my source says his guys have been in and out. Might be teaming up with the Cartel and the Butchers.”

“Lotta gangs in one place.”

“Yeah. Imagine that. Something’s got ‘em spooked.”

He narrows his eyes at her lame impression of him as he takes a bite of his noodles.

“Who’s your source?”

“Guy I know.”

“Good guy?”

“He’s improving.”

“Huh,” Frank scoffs, and Karen some days doesn’t believe it herself; she learned that Turk used to be involved with trafficking. He swears up and down that he doesn’t do that anymore, but those poor women…

Still. A source is a source, and she and Turk have a history now. Lived through that Daredevil snare together. It’s not like they’re friends, but it’s good to have people you can turn to from all walks of life.

“I’m getting close,” she says to take Frank’s mind off the Turk thing. “Almost have the whole network mapped out. I just can’t figure out where the money’s coming from. Or where it’s going.”

“Lawyer, right? All these assholes got lawyers who do half the bad shit for them.”

“Yeah, and so does Fisk. But I can’t dig anything up on Fisk’s lawyer that points to him being involved. I tried tailing him, but _that_ went nowhere, and Matt says he’s having just about as much luck as I did. Fisk threatened Matt the last time Matt went to see him. Did you know about that? And that lawyer was there. So the lawyer knows _something,_ but Fisk seems to have learned his lesson about keeping the whole thing as murky as possible, because that’s what he’s doing. Last time, there was a trail. It took us a while, but once we uncovered it, it was _there_ , and we could see it. Lawyers, accountants. Holdings and dummy corporations with ties to Fisk, however vague and shady. This is all criminal. He isn’t trying to keep it aboveboard, because he doesn’t need to. Kingpin and Fisk are two totally different people, as far as this paper trail is concerned.”

“Okay so…so, what, he dealin’ in all cash? Where’s he getting his money?”

“Far as I can tell, the guy is dealing in promises and a reputation. When we did this at Nelson Murdock, he had a girlfriend, Vanessa. She’s gone, spirited away to some other country. His mom, too. So we know he has access to _something_. That’s not cheap.”

“Gotta be the easiest way to tie something to that lawyer, right?”

“Yeah. That’s what I’m thinking. I can work the Vanessa angle, but…we don’t want to show our hand too much. Our biggest advantage is that Fisk has no idea that we know who he is. So just…pause on that one for now, okay? Leave the warehouse alone, let them keep operating. Just…keep an eye on it. Maybe we’ll get lucky and his lawyer will make an appearance.”

Frank doesn’t seem to like it, but he shrugs and mutters an affirmative.

Then comes the waiting, every night when he leaves. It gets easier as the days go by to fall asleep when he’s out there. Max helps, curled on the floor across the room. She has her ringer on as loud as it can go, and that helps too. Knowing he could reach out if he wanted to – not that he ever would.

When he comes back, she wakes up. She knows how quiet he can be when he wants to be, so she knows he’s loud on purpose. He seems to understand without having to be told that she would rather _know_ he’s okay. She gets up and checks him over. Helps him stitch up or bandage any wounds he can’t reach. The first few days, he’s reluctant to let her touch him, like he’s afraid his blood will stain her skin permanently, but soon he’s bending his neck at her touch, pointing out spots he can’t get to on his own. She works quietly, at first. Gently. Afraid to break whatever tenuous peace he’s managed to find by spilling blood. Eventually, she works up the courage to ask him about his night. He doesn’t give her many details, which is fine. Usually a number, if she asks. But reluctant, like he can see her keeping tally in her mind.

It’s true that the number of people dead by his hand is daunting. True that she sometimes bites her lip when he’s killed more than a few that night.

But a week goes by. And it’s easier.

He tells her names. Crimes. Soothes her with facts: one guy shot up a liquor store and killed four people. One guy killed a kid and walked because he knew someone who knew someone who knew someone. Pedophiles. Murderers. Rapists. When the facts are laid out and he’s done talking, she’s glad for him. She praises him with even stitching done by hands that don’t shake and a lingering touch to press the bandages in place.

She pushes him, bit by bit, but not too hard.

* * *

A week is long enough for habits to form. For things to feel comfortable. So when one morning, after a week and two days, the sun starts to come up and she’s stirred from sleep and realizes that Frank never came home, she’s immediately worried.

Max is worried too. He whimpers at her, like a reminder that she should be freaking out with her. She texts Frank, just a question mark. She gets dressed. Takes Max for a walk. The dog pulls at his leash the whole way, eager to get back home. But Frank isn’t there when they get back, and he never answered her text.

She goes into the Bulletin, even though she knows it’s risky. She clutches her spare key to Frank’s place the whole way in. Clutches her phone, too.

“There you are!” Ellison exclaims, relieved, ushering her into his office and closing the door. “Where have you been? Are you okay?”

“Yeah, sure. I’m okay. Hey, did anything happen last night?”

“Lots of stuff happened last night. It’s New York.”

“Um. Anything with, uh. The Punisher?”

She was expecting the glare. The incredulous scoff. She was expecting all of it. But that doesn’t make it any easier to deal with.

“I’ve already asked you a lot of questions about this, and you’ve never given me a good answer before, so I can’t say I’m expecting one now, but… _why_?”

“For a story,” she says innocently, but her tone isn’t convincing even to her, and she knows it’ll be even less so to him.

“Unless you’re working on The Complete Works of The Punisher, bullshit. But, if it’ll set your heart at ease, _yes_. There was something last night with The Punisher. Witnesses had him down by the docks. There was a shootout. Three dead, so far unidentified. Punisher’s nowhere to be seen, since I know that was your next question.”

“But they know he isn’t one of the dead?”

She hears the way her voice breaks on the last word, and so does Ellison, and he looks at her with exhaustion that she feels like a slap in the face.

“No. They don’t think so.”

“Okay, thanks,” she says, heading for the door, trying to think of her next steps.

“Karen, wait. I don’t like this. I thought you were off this.”

“If only it was that easy,” she says, a helpless laugh bubbling up.

“Are you sure you’re okay?”

“Just haven’t had any coffee yet. I gotta go.”

He watches her leave. She can feel it. She heads back into her own office and logs in so she can check her email. Nothing about Frank, from Frank, anything. She reads the story about the shootout, but it’s sparse and almost without any detail. Frustrated, she slams her laptop closed and leans back in her chair.

The chair hits the back of its arc and starts to bounce back up, and she spins slightly, already ready to get on her feet, and there’s a sort of tinkling, spitting sound that she finds hard to place until she realizes it was a bullet piercing her window.

She realizes it because the window shatters about a millisecond later.

The whole thing is probably not even a full _second_ , but it drags out for so long, and she bolts out of her chair, snagging her purse, ducking and running and screaming as a second bullet whizzes by her, and then a third scrapes along the skin of her shoulder.

Both bullets pass through her window, through her wall, and shoot out into the main office, so by the time she manages to get out there, everyone else is already headed for the stairs, screaming and ducking and staying away from the windows, unaware for now that they were never the targets. Ellison spots her and points for the back stairs, away from the shooter, and she understands. Where she goes, death follows. She needs to stay out of sight.

* * *

Ellison finds her a little later in the parking garage. She’s pacing, crying, feeling trapped and scared. He looks calm, has this way of looking like he’s got everything under control, but his hands are shaking and she knows he doesn’t.

“Was that him?” he asks. And sure, so Karen could just say _yes_ , or _probably_ , because pretty much everyone who doesn’t buy the police-sponsored “Frank Castle is dead, and this new Punisher is a copycat” theory assumes Frank’s after her still, but she shakes her head instead, because Ellison has to know. It’s bad enough when Brett checks up on her, asks her if she’s sure she doesn’t want WitSec until they take Frank out. Bad enough that his well meaning worry makes her sad and guilty. She can’t take any more of it from Ellison. Especially not right now.

“It wasn’t Frank,” she says. “I don’t know where Frank is. He might be dead. The Kingpin’s men might have captured him. I don’t…”

“It’s his M.O., Karen. How can you be so sure?”

She huffs out a sharp breath and runs her fingers through her hair. That’s a leading question if she’s ever heard one, but she lets herself be led.

“He only hurts criminals,” she says finally. “I’m not a criminal.”

“No, bullshit. You’ve been convinced from the beginning that he wouldn’t hurt you! I’ve been giving myself ulcers worrying every time you write another goddamn thinkpiece about the Punisher, and you breeze in and out like there’s nothing wrong in the world.”

“Because he’s never been after me! I explained this to you! I said it after the trial. I said it after my place got shot up. It’s never been him.”

“Karen, just tell me. Just give me that much. How do you _know_?”

It’s funny that she’s saved from having to answer by the ringing of her phone. Funnier still that it’s the ringtone she downloaded special for Frank after he gave her his number (in her defense, she was running on forty-eight hours with maybe two hours of sleep, and she thought it was _hilarious_ ).

“Is that Earth, Wind, and Fire?” Ellison asks, and Karen’s so relieved she almost can’t dig her phone out from the bottom of her purse, her hands are shaking so hard.

“Where are you?” she asks when she answers. “Are you okay?”

“That guy bothering you?” comes the low, gravel-laced voice, and she’s so relieved for a second that she doesn’t understand what he’s asking.

“Where are you?”

“Red pickup. Two rows back. Left.”

“Okay.”

“You didn’t answer the question.”

“No, no. I’m fine. I’ll be there in a second.”

She hangs up and looks back at Ellison, who looks angry.

“Who was that?” he asks.

“It’s better if you don’t know.”

“It’s him, isn’t it? Castle.”

She looks at him for a long time, trying to judge his reaction. He looks exasperated. But he always looks exasperated.

“That day in my apartment. When everyone said he shot it up, trying to get at me? It wasn’t him. He was there with me.”

A long silence now, as the judgement increases. It was what he was waiting to hear, and now that he’s heard it, he can’t believe it.

“There…in your apartment?”

“He came to tell me that he wasn’t the one who killed Reyes and…I tried to tell you, remember? You’ve seen the ballistics reports. I know you have. The shooting came from outside, on the street. Frank was two feet away from me with his hands in the air while I held him at gunpoint. When the shooting started, he tackled me to the ground and kept me there. Shielded me. It wasn’t him, Ellison. None of it.”

“Except the brutal murders of gang members all over the city, both before and since then,” Ellison points out. Karen wishes she didn’t feel so automatically defensive about it when it shows on her face. “Karen, I understand your position on this, remember? And I agree. Hypothetically, yes. The Punisher has done a lot of good. But hypothetically, privately cheering him on when he takes out murderers and chatting with him on your cellphone are two _wildly_ different things.”

“Someone attacked me in my apartment. Only reason I’m still here, all my limbs intact, is because I knew if I left my window open, Frank would see it and come give me a dumb lecture about safety.”

“Jesus, Karen. Are you okay?”

“Frank protected me. That’s…that’s what he does, okay? I’ve been hiding out at his place, but he didn’t come home this morning, and I got worried, and I came in here even though I knew it was dangerous.”

“Jesus, Karen,” he says again. It seems like it’s the only thing he can think to say.

“It’s hard to explain.”

“No. I don’t think it is.”

“Ellison, please. Just…keep this to yourself. Think of him as a source.”

“A source,” Ellison scoffs, but he looks at her with that familiar judgmental dad look: she knows he doesn’t like it, but she also knows he’ll keep his mouth shut. “This is a dangerous path, Karen.”

“I’ve been on a dangerous path for a long time now. You’re one of the only people in the world who knows how long. Frank is a good friend to have.”

“As long as he stays a friend.”

“He’ll stay a friend. I know him.”

Ellison sighs. Shoves his hands into his coat pockets. Looks back into the building. There are sirens coming from everywhere. She can hear them out front, surrounding the building across the street. She knows it’s dangerous for Frank to be here too much longer. She has to go.

“Okay,” Ellison says finally. “Okay. But I want to meet him.”

Which strikes Karen as a really terrible and yet also really funny idea, and so she says, “Okay.”

Ellison seems surprised by that, like he expected her to put up more of a fight. Like he’s now not totally sure he _wants_ to meet The Punisher face to face.

“Yeah?” he asks.

“He’s right over here,” she replies, sweeping her arm grandly enough that Frank will surely see it. She starts walking, her hands shoved into her pockets.

“He’s _here_?” Ellison hisses, but he jogs to catch up, looking around like the worst spy in the world.

“Yeah.”

“Karen, you know how this looks.”

“Yeah? Since when do we give a shit about that? He’s a _source_ remember?”

Ellison gives his long suffering sigh, the one that speaks of ulcers without actually saying the word. Then he follows. Quiet. Resentful. A little stressed out.

Frank has the resentful part down when Karen and Ellison reach the red pickup. The window is rolled down, and he arches his eyebrows at her. He’s dressed normally today, the vest he was wearing when he left last night gone and replaced with a blue jacket, his baseball cap pulled low over his eyes, his face more clear and bruise free than it has been in a while.

“What is this?” he asks, and he looks resigned to whatever it is. Unhappy, but resigned.

“This is my boss,” Karen says. “And _this,_ Ellison, is my anonymous source. Happy?”

Ellison sort of gapes. Maybe he was expecting someone more intimidating. Or maybe he was expecting someone _less_ intimidating. He’s standing kind of halfway behind her, almost peeking out around her. It’s frankly a little ridiculous, but she’s tired, and she’s sick of all of this.

“It’s, uh. Nice to meet you?” Ellison asks.

“Uh-huh.” Frank looks bizarrely confused by everything that’s happening. Karen turns back to look at her boss, her eyebrows still alarmingly high on her head.

“I have to go. I shouldn’t have come here today. I’m sorry about all of this, but I’m going to stay away until this is finished.”

“Where are you gonna be?”

“I’ll be safe. I’ll call you later.”

“The police will want to know…he shot up _your_ office. They’re going to want to question you.”

“I’ve got someone in the force I can talk to about it.”

“Karen…”

He looks concerned and defeated, and he looks at her with this sad sort of look, like a slightly more pathetic version of his disappointed dad expression.

“There’s something big going on in this city, Ellison. And it’s bigger than just one man, one vigilante, and one reporter. You know I won’t rest until I’ve got it figured out. For all of us.”

“I thought I told you to stop working the Kingpin angle.”

“You did. And I did. For a while, anyway. But the Kingpin angle is determined to work me, so I’m gonna work it back.”

“Ben…”

“I don’t know what Ben would do if he was here. I don’t know what he would think of all this. He’d probably tell me to knock it off and then go around behind my back and do the dirty work himself. I don’t _know_. But it doesn’t matter. This is what I have to do.”

Ellison sighs and pulls Karen into a sudden hug. She’s surprised by it, but she returns the gesture. It’s sweet. She feels a little less lonely and desperate for someone else’s smiles. It’s been so long since someone has just _hugged_ her like this. Since someone so physically made her aware that they were worried about her. And, Christ, isn’t that just the saddest thing?

“Just be _careful_. I’ll cover for you. Keep in touch.”

“I will,” Karen says, and then she can finally climb into the pickup beside Frank. Ellison keeps watching them until they’ve driven away.


	10. And Here I was Starting to Think I Was Your Only Friend

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Karen starts to realize just how far she's fallen

She keeps her head down as they head through the city. Frank is much better at this than she is; he drives casually, one arm slung over the seat between them, his head tipped back so he can see from under the baseball cap. She looks at him in profile, follows the broken line of his nose and the strong jaw that’s always clenching and unclenching, and the lips that she’s been thinking about _way_ too fucking much lately. He’s a comforting figure to have beside her.

“Where were you last night?” she asks.

“Kind of a long story.”

“Seems like we’ve got time.”

She’s annoyed, trying to hide it, but he finally seems to sense it.

“Was with Red last night,” he says. “Tryna find his old lady. Guess Red thought she was avoiding him. Thought we might have more luck if we, you know, teamed up. He had some ideas. Looking for her in places where this Hand group likes to be. Some of your junkie warehouses. Shit like that. Don’t know what Red’s gotten himself into, but I haven’t ever seen shit like that.”

“Something that can bring a woman back from the dead…I mean, we’re talking about a lot of weird stuff,” she points out, and he grunts his agreement.

“She wasn’t around, but one of their people spotted us. Turned into a real shitshow, especially since the boy scout wouldn’t let me fuckin’ kill anyone. Red took a few hits – punches, not bullets – and I had to get him outta there. He didn’t want to go. Wanted to fight. I’ve never seen him that angry. But I managed to get him to Claire’s to fix his busted rib and give him some advice about the fractured eye socket he picked up. She wasn’t happy about that. Think she figured Red didn’t know where she lived. Phone ran outta juice at some point. By the time I got back, you were gone. Police radio picked up chatter about an intruder in the building across from yours. Didn’t make it in time.”

He grimaces at that, annoyed with himself.

“You must be exhausted,” she says, and he shrugs. Holds up his thermos. She grins at him, and it’s natural and real and relieved. Hard to believe she kind of got shot earlier. “We going back to your place?”

“Yeah. And you’re stayin’ there this time.”

* * *

She’s not surprised that he was worried. But she _is_ a little surprised that he’s so open about it. Then again, for Frank, being ‘open about it’ means showing the slightest of signs. To her it seems like alarm bells. Like panic. Really, it’s just a twitch of an expression change and the fact that he holds the door open for her and watches her walk up the stairs to his apartment with the critical eye of a dance instructor. Looking for any parts that aren’t working.

When he notices the blood soaking her black coat, he glowers darker than she’s ever seen.

“That the only place you were shot?” he asks, voice like gravel when they get up to his place. Max wags his tail, but seems more subdued than usual. Maybe he can pick up on the mood.

“What? Oh, yeah. It’s nothing.”

She takes off her coat carefully, the drying blood sticking to her white shirt and the skin beneath. It’s half-congealed at this point, and it peels off slowly. Painfully. She hisses through her teeth when she does it, and Frank watches with his hands gripping the back of one of the chairs.

“Sit,” he says when she’s done, and she sits in the chair he’s holding onto, and he takes her upper arm more gently than she thought he was capable of touching anything. He bends down, looks at it under the light, twists it delicately under his hands. She lets him. Breathless, she lets him.

“It’s not bad,” she says softly, and he grunts his agreement, brushing his fingers up the back of her arm, feeling at the tear in her skin. She wonders of he realizes he’s doing it. She doesn’t think he does. That makes it even less fair, that he can make her skin shiver and shake, and he’s solid and steady as ever.

“Don’t think it was Bullseye that did this,” he says, and she turns to look at him. He seems to realize he’s still holding her arm, and he lets go unceremoniously.

“Think Bullseye would have killed me?” she asks.

“Yeah. Bullseye don’t seem the type to miss.”

“Unless he was trying to scare me.”

“Think he needs to?”

“Don’t know. Did he get a chance to talk to Matt yet?”

“Not far as I know. But maybe Red decided to keep that conversation to himself.”

That’s a good point. No use tipping his hand to Frank if he decides to go through with it. Then again, she has a hard time imagining that Matt ever would. He may not like Frank very much, but so much of his moral code revolves around _not_ killing. And despite himself, Matt really _does_ like Frank a lot.

“Well, if it wasn’t Bullseye, there are a few other gangsters I’ve pissed off lately. Guess we should just be glad they didn’t have your _skills._ ”

“Thinkin’ it might have been _her_.”

Frank’s cringing a little as he says the words. Cringing like he doesn’t quite want to say them, because he’s sure it’s the right answer. She looks down at the blood spiraling down her upper arm, watches it drip from her elbow to the table.

“Elektra,” she says. Unnecessary, but she needs to taste the name, needs to hear it said aloud. “Think she’d have done this?”

“Tough to say. Only met her the once. But seems like it might be her style. It ain’t like she went for a killshot, right? And Red didn’t exactly seem surprised when she turned up and was raising hell.”

“You’re right.”

“Whoever it was, sure they got on camera somewhere. I got a guy who can help me track the footage down.”

“You got a guy, huh?” Karen asks with an amused chuckle. “And here I was starting to think I was your only friend.”

“Nice,” Frank grumbles, and he gets to work on her arm.

* * *

She’s expecting him to be kind of a dick about her not being careful and going to the Bulletin because she was worried about him, so when he’s surprisingly nice, surprisingly gentle and understanding, she’s moved almost to tears.

She blames the recent trauma.

She sips the black coffee he gives her and then sits scrolling through her laptop while he sleeps. She checks news sites, looks for pictures that include the crime scenes of her office and the building across the street. No one saw the intruder. They fired from an unused storeroom. Left the gun behind. No one seems to even know how they got _in_. Nothing about a strikingly beautiful woman with a whipcrack wit and a fiery temper.

She falls asleep for a while, cradling her laptop, and when she wakes up again, she has a blanket draped over her and her laptop is on the floor. Frank is sleeping again, seemingly unmoved.

She hates that she has the compulsion to pull the blanket closer and breathe in his gunpowder scent, but she does. She buries her nose in it and lays on her side, and she doesn’t fall asleep again, isn’t even tired, just scrolls through more news sites on her phone and keeps looking for anything. Any evidence.

* * *

When Frank wakes up, she’s back on her laptop. She wants to thank him for the blanket – it’s on the tip of her tongue – but she chickens out and just smiles at him as he goes toward the kitchen area. He manages a grimacey kind of smile in return.

It doesn’t feel like it did earlier in the week. It feels cramped. It feels like she’s imposing, even though he’s the one who told her to stay here.

It feels overwhelming. All of it.

“Why’d you bring your boss over?” he asks when he’s out of the shower, his hair wet and lightly curled. She knows from experience that he’s going to cut it soon. He doesn’t like it when it gets too long. Maybe it’s for the best; she has this recurring fantasy of combing her fingers through it. Those are bad enough when she’s not living with the guy.

“I wanted him to see I was all right,” she decides.

“Doesn’t seem like it worked.”

“Maybe not, but he’ll keep quiet.”

“That’s not…I’m not worried about that.”

He stands across from her, arms folded, squinting down like he’s trying hard to read her mind.

“What are you worried about, then?” she asks.

“Ain’t your job to convince people I’m…um. Not a monster, I guess.”

She sighs and closes the lid of her laptop. Leans her elbows on her knees and thinks while she looks up at him. Wording is so important to her now. So is thinking before she speaks. Weighing her options. It’s what he does when he talks to her, and she’s learned to return the favor.

“It’s not my job,” she agrees. “But the people who think you’re a monster, they tend to think I’m a monster for…for caring about you. Sometimes it’s important for me to at least try to make them understand. Even if I know it won’t work.”

“Like with the lawyers.”

“Yeah. Like with the lawyers.”

“Okay,” Frank says. He chews that over, considers. Finally asks, “you think you’re a monster? For, um. Caring?”

“No. I think I’m on the right side of this.”

And it’s true, and he can tell, and he gives a satisfied nod.

“Everyone thinks they’re on the right side.”

“Guess time will tell,” she replies. And he finally seems to accept that, and he moves away, and she breathes easier, knowing he gets it.

He cleans his guns, sitting on the couch beside her, and it’s like a rabbit has hopped up to her bench in the park, and she’s practically still so she doesn’t spook him.

“Anything?” he asks at once point.

“Going through pictures on Twitter now. Lot of people uploaded shots of the aftermath, but no sign of Elektra. Or Bullseye. Or anyone I recognize as someone who might want me dead.”

“Mm. Wouldn’t be that easy.”

“Guess not. I can reach out to a few sources.”

“Later,” he says. “More self-defense first.”

He sounds like he’s expecting her to complain. But it sounds like the best possible way to spend today.

* * *

It’s easy to notice once they get fighting. It’s nothing like it was before. And it’s not that she’s gotten better – though she has – but every movement they make feels edgy and desperate. It feels like do or die. They’re both overwhelmed by this, both feeling caged and like there’s no escape. How can you fight an enemy when you don’t even know who they are? And you don’t even really know why they’re fighting you? For Frank, apparently, the answer is that you keep fighting. Karen likes that approach.

After one particularly bad fall, she pulls herself up, half laughing, scraping her ponytail out of her face, and Frank is looking down at her with a genuine smile. Not the sort of world-weary smirk she already felt kind of blessed to see. But a genuine laugh, a proud amusement, and her heart does this sick clenching thing that almost feels like vomit. Nothing like the cotton candy sweetness that she’s been letting herself feel, the tender appreciation that this man is so much more than the monster he seems to be and she’s one of the only people alive who sees it. No, this is pain. This is a warning. This is too close, too fast.

If she could, she would run. But she has nowhere to go. So she has to suck it up, get back to her feet, and keep fighting.

One of the things that really threw a wrench into Matt’s revelation that he has been Daredevil this whole time was the fact that he almost immediately launched into an explanation. She knows why he did it – she was staring, blank-faced, not moving, not speaking, and he got nervous and needed to overexplain the way he always did. But it blew up in both their faces, because he said the thing about how he’s known for a while how she feels about him. That he can tell, just from the way that her body reacts to him.

“How’s my body reacting to _that_ , Matt?” she had asked.

“Embarrassed. Angry.”

He was right. Right to put embarrassment first, too. And here Karen had been thinking that it was lucky Matt couldn’t see how much she blushed around him. All along, he could see so much more.

Frank’s the same way. When he looks at people, he just _knows_. Maybe, she thinks, that’s why he turned the conversation to Matt in the diner. Maybe he knew she was feeling too close to him, feeling too much like a reflection and like he was the only person who understood her. Maybe that was why he was so adamant that she grab onto Matt. _Don’t grab onto me_ , his speech had said. _I’m no good to hold on to._

She grabs onto him now, trying to use her body weight, inconsiderable as it is, to flip him the way he instructed. She manages, though it’s messy, and she jabs a pretend knife under his throat, one knee down on his chest.

“There,” he says, and she meets his eyes, sees the pride there. “Almost perfect.”

“High praise from The Punisher,” she murmurs, and she wants to kiss him again, but she scuttles back to her feet and holds a hand out to pull him up.

It’s a mistake to feel for him the things she’s been feeling. He used her as bait. Shut her out in the woods. He’s a killer. Not a monster, not that, but he won’t stop killing for her. She’s learned that already. He’s a wanted man. Will end up dead probably sooner than later. Grieving. Unlikely to return even _half_ of what she feels for him. Feeling anything, any morsel of affection or appreciation, is only going to end in pain.

She thinks of the way she felt looking at the remains of the boat explosion. That had hurt badly enough, but now? He is a friend. One of her closest, actually. And even trapped in this shitty studio, they have a rhythm that isn’t unpleasant. They have an effortless sort of understanding. Losing him now will be bad enough without admitting to herself that Matt’s not the only one who makes her heart beat faster.

“Again,” Frank says when she ends up on her back. And she gets back up.

His family is dead. _He_ is dead. He said as much in the woods. She was the thing that was anchoring him to Frank Castle, to the man from Before, and he wanted that part cut out of him like a cancer that was threatening to spread. He didn’t _want_ to be better. He wanted to be The Punisher. He _chose_ to be The Punisher. Could she live with that? If she thought back to the crime scene photos, could she really live with loving the man who wrought so much pain?

Not loving. Don’t be dramatic, Karen. Pre-love at best.

Frank Castle, The Punisher. Whatever he was. He wouldn’t love her back. He said as much in the diner: he would never feel that again. His wife was gone, and he wouldn’t ever feel her pain or his love, and that was okay. Romantic, from an unbiased perspective, Karen supposed. Sad, but romantic, like those movies her friends loved in high school, where someone always ended up sobbing prettily over a headstone. Karen would watch those and feel her gut roiling with sympathetic horror because that was real to so many people, and it would probably one day be real for her.

“Again,” Frank says, and she helps him up.

She has the worst fucking luck with men.


	11. This Isn't What She Wants

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things come to a head with Bullseye and Elektra.

She’s expecting them to settle back into something of the same pattern they’ve had for the past week, but it doesn’t even get to last a night.

Karen gets a call on her cellphone when Frank’s out killing, and the distorted voice tells her to go to a website, and against literally every better judgement she has, she enters the overly complex URL into the address bar, and…

And it’s Foggy. A webcam, and it’s _Foggy_.

He’s tied up. Gagged. Sitting in a chair behind which faceless figures stand, one of them with their hand on Foggy’s shoulder. Foggy’s looking lost and in pain as blood trickles down from one temple, and Karen gasps and covers her mouth and pleads with the voice on the phone to let him go.

The voice gives her an address, tells her to come alone with everything she has on Kingpin, and hangs up.

And here’s the thing: Karen knows it’s the worst idea she’s ever had. But it’s Foggy, and she knows they want _her_ , knows this is about Frank and Matt, and she knows that if she doesn’t get there soon, one of her best friends is going to die.

She texts Frank. Almost doesn’t tell him the address, but then changes her mind. He’s already going to be furious about this. Might as well give him a chance to do something about it.

She calls a cab. Gets dressed in black, in clothes she can fight in if she has to. Keeps her gun in her coat pocket. Straps one of Frank’s knives to her ankle the way he showed her. Gives Max a big hug. She knows she has to leave, but she wishes Frank was here. Then again, if Frank was here, she doesn’t think he’d ever let her go. Not even with him following.

She calls Matt, but he doesn’t answer. She texts him, hoping he’s at least got the sound on so he can hear the ring, can listen to her text, even if he doesn’t feel like talking.

She knows it’s a bad idea. If this is Bullseye, which it almost certainly is, then getting herself, Frank, and Matt in the same place is a recipe for disaster.

But it’s _Foggy_.

She has to do it.

She just hopes she gets there in time. And she hopes her other friends aren’t far behind.

The address turns out to be a warehouse by the docks, because of course it does, because that’s the combination of every gangster’s favorite place in New York. She’s never investigated this one before, so she can’t even get a real read on it. Doesn’t know exactly what she’ll be up against.

“Hey!” comes a voice out of the darkness, and she spins around, gun out. “Jesus, Page. Relax.”

“Turk,” she growls, jamming the gun back into her coat.

“Saw you from across the street. Was gonna remind you this is the kind of neighborhood you don’t want to mess around in. Seems like you already got that part figured out, though. Nice piece.”

“Didn’t realize you were on the neighborhood watch,” Karen says, attempting some good humor.

“Yeah, well. Only for pain in the ass reporters I been in the trenches with.”

“And, as always, I appreciate your partnership. But I have to ask: are you involved in any of this?” She gestures up at the warehouse, and Turk shakes his head quickly, glancing both ways down the empty street.

“This isn’t me, Page. This building? Bad news. This is Kingpin’s turf.”

“That’s what I was worried about. Hey, you know who he is, right? Kingpin?”

“I hear things. That’s why I’m warning you to stay away. I didn’t save both our asses from those fucking ninjas just to see you killed by messing around where you don’t belong.”

“Oh yeah? That was all you, huh?” Karen laughs. “Daredevil had nothing to do with it?”

“Hey, Daredevil wasn’t the one got his ankle almost cut the fuck off, so I’m taking credit.”

“That’s fair, but I’m going in. They’ve got my friend.”

“You want any backup?”

“They told me to come alone. But I appreciate the offer.”

“Okay.” Turk looks doubtfully at the warehouse. “Nice knowing you, Page. You survive this, I’ll give you some quotes and shit.”

Despite herself, Karen laughs.

“Oh yeah?”

“You’ll have earned them.”

He gives her another look, this one clearly questioning her sanity, and then he shoves his hands into his pockets and crosses the street. Disappears into an alley.

And Karen is alone.

She faces the warehouse and tries not to think of it as the dumbest thing she’s done in her life. Surely allowing herself to start to fall in love with the fucking Punisher is a worse decision, right? This is brave. This is just…brave.

 

 

(and stupid)

 

 

She’s expecting a lot of guards, but there are only five people in the whole building when she walks in. Foggy is front and center, tied to a chair, and he looks at her with annoyed horror when she walks in, like he really thought she was going to leave him here. Bullseye stands directly behind him a knife to Foggy’s throat. Elektra is next to him, looking as beautiful and deadly as ever. And then there are these two _massive_ guys: bald, arms like tree trunks. They look like weird, young Fisks.

It’s maybe not many guards. But it’s more than enough to keep her from doing anything heroic.

“Well, I’m here,” she says.

“Who were you talking to outside?” Bullseye asks. Cutting straight to the point. Cutting into Foggy’s skin a little too, a reminder that she doesn’t need.

“A source I’ve used before. Trying to warn me this is Kingpin turf and I shouldn’t get involved. Who shot up my office today?”

Elektra raises one hand, grinning.

“Sorry. I was only supposed to injure you enough to get you to a hospital where we could commandeer you, but as Bullseye hasn’t _shut up about_ since, my aim was just a fraction off, and I see your little guard dog has already patched you up. The two of you are quite good at avoiding attention, when you want to be. Unfortunately, your friend here isn’t so gifted.”

“Foggy has nothing to do with this.”

“That’s where you’re wrong. Mr. Nelson, Mr. Murdock, and Miss Page,” Bullseye says, counting off on his fingers. “Daredevil. Punisher.” A full palm, and he holds it up, displaying the burned flesh in a ring of a target in the center of his skin. The guy certainly sticks to his motif. “I met with Daredevil the other day. What a sanctimonious prick. Wouldn’t agree to help me kill The Punisher, even when I promised so nicely to let you and the lawyers go if he did.”

She’s surprised, briefly, that Matt didn’t mention this meeting. But only briefly. She can practically _hear_ him explaining that he did it to protect her.

“He has his code,” she says shortly. “Unlike most of the people in this city. And he probably knew you were lying. He’s _good_ at that.”

“Seems he’s not the only one who’s perceptive. Sounds like you already know I’m not letting your friend go.”

“Why not just take me? They’ll both come if you have me. Won’t they, Elektra?”

Elektra smiles. It’s hard to figure out what the smile means. She always looks like she has everything under control. Karen hopes that’s true.

“She isn’t wrong. Both our vigilante friends have soft spots for Miss Page.”

“That’s good to hear,” Bullseye says, but he just digs harder into Foggy’s throat with the knife. “But Kingpin gave me a full hand. And there’s no better man in this city to work for. If he needs me to prove my worth, I’ll prove my worth. And so will she.”

He jerks his thumb toward Elektra, who smiles wider. And Karen knows she has to do something. But for a moment, her mind is painfully blank. It’s a panicked, racing-heart moment, trying to figure out how to get Bullseye to stop pressing on Foggy’s neck like that, to stop hurting him like that. And she can’t think of anything, can’t think of a single word to say.

Then, it’s gone. The smoke clears. The hazy anger and fear are gone, and there’s everything she’s learned over the past few weeks. Everything she’s worked for.

“How much can the Kingpin’s respect really be worth?” she asks calmly. Turns her head so it’s obvious she’s looking at Elektra. So Elektra meets her eye. “After all, Wilson Fisk? Kingpin? He’s in jail, and likely to stay there.”

Elektra’s smile grows, turns into an almost innocent delight, her eyes sparkling, her mouth opening, a laugh coming out of her that sounds like someone about to get on the world’s best water slide.

“Oh, darling. I _like_ you,” she says, and then she strikes.

She goes for Bullseye first, knocking the knife away from Foggy’s neck and kicking the surprised assassin backwards, flipping back to the two bald goons in the next moment to parry their attempted punches and knock one of their guns out of their hands. Karen scurries forward and pulls out her switchblade so she can cut the ropes tying Foggy down and can yank the tape off his mouth and pull him into a hug in the middle of this warzone. Bullseye lunges for them when Elektra’s back is turned, but it’s perfect, it’s so perfect, because Karen has been practicing frontal assaults all day, and her tired muscles take over and dodge, and strike, and drive her fist into Bullseye’s face with all the force she can muster.

“Holy shit, Karen!” Foggy yelps, and pulls her away as Bullseye stumbles up, his nose broken and bleeding, his face contorted in rage.

“Stop them!” he yells, and at first Karen thinks he’s talking to the two muscular dudes getting their asses handed to them by Elektra, but then _more_ muscular dudes show up, blocking the front door, and Karen knew, she knew that it wouldn’t be that easy, but she still feels like an idiot for daring to hope that it could be.

“Any other plans?” Foggy asks, clutching her arm tight as they spin around in the center of the room and she tries to look for a way out.

“Hope Elektra can handle it?” Karen guesses. She’s certainly handling it right now; she drives both sais through the chest of one of the men as Karen speaks.

But there are seven men entering the warehouse now. Seven. All of them with guns.

And then there are six, because the one closest to Karen and Foggy goes abruptly limp, a spurt of blood from his temple the only sign of what caused it.

“Frank!” Karen says to Foggy, who looks like he’s trying to decide if he’d rather feel excited or feel guilty for feeling excited. She pulls Foggy backwards, hoping to just sort of hang out in a corner until everyone’s dead. A red blur crashes through a skylight, and then Daredevil is slamming into the man fighting Elektra. She leaves him to it with a cheeky wave and a one-liner Karen can’t hear from here, and then she’s throwing herself into the melee. Another man goes down from a shot to the head.

Bullseye is heading for the back exit, towards the door that’s open to the dock and the harbor beyond, and Matt spots him at the same time Karen does. They lock eyes for a second, and then Matt goes, taking off after him. Karen follows, Foggy on her heels. She hears another shot ring out, and hears Elektra laugh.

Going through the back door is going sharply from light to darkness, and it takes a moment for her to spot Daredevil with Bullseye on the ground under him. Matt’s straddling him, punching him, fuming, his face a map of pain and fury. Karen turns back to Foggy, relieved.

“Are you okay?” she asks.

“Yeah. I’m fine. Jesus.” Foggy holds his hand to his neck and pulls away blood. “Should I be worried about this?”

“It isn’t deep. Just keep your hand there,” Karen says, grabbing his hand and moving it back up to the cut.

“Should we be worried about _that_?” Foggy asks, pointing to Matt, but Matt stops punching and just sits there over the unconscious villain, exhausted.

“Give him a minute,” Karen says, and Foggy does, though he’s still watching his friend with naked concern.

It’s Elektra who snaps Matt out of it. She comes at a bouncy run out the back door and stops when she sees the four of them so close by. With the sound of waves and the wailing of sirens approaching, it’s almost comforting, and Elektra breathes in the fresh air with a smile. Completely unconcerned by the approaching authorities. But she’ll need to get out of here soon. They all will.

“Your boyfriend’s got a _mean_ shot,” she says companionably to Karen. “He took out…”

But it turns into an _oof_ of surprise when Matt rockets out of nowhere, slamming her back against the wall, knocking her sais loose and sending them sprawling.

“What the hell?” he asks, which sounds less threatening and more plaintive, betrayed. Elektra smiles. She smiles at everything, Karen is pretty sure.

“It’s nice to see you too, Matthew,” she says with a genuinely tender kindness that makes both Karen and Foggy look away. “But haven’t you got some unfinished business?”

“Don’t do this again.”

“Why not? He was going to kill your friend. Both of them. Gleefully.”

“So were you.”

“Oh now, don’t be like that. I wouldn’t have hurt her much. Just enough to keep my cover. You know how it is. But she came through anyway. Gave me the name I needed.” She looks at Karen, as pleasant as can be, as if Matt’s forearm isn’t pressing into her windpipe. “Smart girl.”

“Figured you could kick more ass than me,” Karen admits, trying not to laugh. She gets that this is serious, that this is a big moment for Matt, but something about Elektra’s spunky refusal to take it seriously gives her the inappropriate urge to giggle.

“Maybe one day I’ll teach you,” Elektra says, and there’s a familiar grunt as Frank walks up, his sniper rifle slung over one shoulder.

“She’s already got a teacher,” he says, and Elektra’s eyes light up again, and Matt finally accepts that he’s not going to get Elektra to break down and confess her sins right this second, so he backs up and sighs, hands on his hips.

“You should teach her how to shoot like that. Marvelous, really.”

Frank glares skeptically her way, but she doesn’t relent.

“I’m glad we got the chance to work together. Seems a shame not to put our similar skills and morals in the same place. How are you with hand-to-hand fights? Speaking of which, Matthew. Are you going to do the honors, or should I?”

She points down at Bullseye, still prone at the ground.

“I’m sorry,” Karen says quietly to Frank, as Matt launches into a slightly high-pitched lecture in Elektra’s direction.

“For leaving? Or for leaving without telling me?”

“Um. Both. Second one seems worse. But you wouldn’t have let me go?”

“That what you think?” Frank asks, and she thinks of the way he had told her to hold on with both hands at the diner. No, Frank wouldn’t tell her it wasn’t safe. Frank would understand that she would want to do everything she could to protect her family.

“No,” she admits. “I wasn’t really thinking.”

He grunts: that’s fair. She’s a little relieved.

“I was expecting a lot more anger,” she admits.

“Oh, I’m pissed. What’s that you’re always saying? About, you know, understanding but not liking? I can be pissed and still get it.”

“I guess that’s true.”

“…choir boy nonsense!” Elektra exclaims. Matt groans loudly, dramatically, and it’s almost funny, with bodies cooling in the warehouse behind them, and Bullseye here wounded between them, and Karen shoots a grin to Foggy, who stifles a laugh, and she can hear Frank even giving in, giving a reluctant snort.

“I’m not letting you kill him, Elektra!”

Which, obviously, is the perfect moment for it to all go wrong.

Bullseye moves quick. Karen has a moment to appreciate that. He rolls, a kind of rodent-like scurry, and Elektra spots him first, and he grabs her discarded sai from the ground and throws it.

She dodges it perfectly, the metal sliding just beyond her stomach as she turns to the side.

“Sorry, love,” she says, smirking at him. “Been there, done that.”

But Bullseye is already moving, is already turning. His other arm extends lightning quick, and Karen has a moment to think _oh, he’s ambidextrous_ , like an idiot, and then she just kind of…

It’s hard to describe. It hits her like a truck, whatever he throws. It’s a long, brown stick looking thing, and Karen realizes that it’s Matt’s, the weapon he uses to fight with.

And once she’s figured _that_ out, she thinks, _oh God, that’s…that’s what that was. Hitting my chest. Piercing my ribs. He threw that really hard, didn’t he_?

All of it, all of this, it’s all just in _seconds_.

It’s a low clenching feeling, something like when you get punched in the stomach except ten times worse, and she falls back, sees Frank and Foggy both watching her, both reaching out, their eyes a similar shade of shocked and wide, and Elektra’s mouth is open to scream a warning that’s too late, and then Karen’s back hits the wood of the pier and she looks up at the stars.

There’s a roar. _Frank_. Foggy’s face and Elektra’s face looming over her. Elektra yelling into a phone.

“This isn’t what she wants!” Matt yells.

“ _Like hell_!” Frank shouts back. And they’re both kind of right, and they’re both kind of wrong. She wants them both here, both bent over her like the others. Wants Frank to push her hair back from her face with fingers that aren’t used to being delicate anymore. She wants Matt to hold her hand. She wants him to lean down and press his lips to her forehead.

But she also wants to hear Bullseye’s skull crack open. She wants Frank to pound his face bloody, wants to hear Bullseye squeal and plead like those men in the diner because _fuck_ him. Fuck him for doing this to her, and fuck those men in the diner too. And fuck the Colonel, and fuck those three men outside her apartment who Frank killed quietly so she wouldn’t know he was out there. She wants Frank to burn their world down for what they have all done and tried to do.

It’s…it’s complicated.

At least she gets one of those things she wants before she goes. It sounds like someone dropping a watermelon when Frank crushes his skull against the dock. That’s funny, right? She’s always liked watermelon.


	12. Love Doesn't Discriminate

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It wouldn't be Frank Castle if he didn't get a good monologue in.

When Karen wakes up, her first thought is in Kevin’s voice, and it’s “ _bulllllllshit_ ”.

It’s something her brother used to say all the time. A so-familiar expression of disbelief. She hears it drawn out in exactly the same way, with the same good-natured ribbing. Total incredulity.

Bullshit. There’s no way she’s still alive.

When she opens her eyes, Claire is standing over her, looking at her chart.

“I thought you quit,” is the only thing Karen can think of to say. Claire jumps, puts her hand over her heart.

“Jesus. You scared the shit out of me. Don’t do that. How are you? You okay?”

“Um…”

“Don’t answer that. Horrible question. You’re doing fine, but I’m sure you feel like shit.”

“Uh…”

“Matt called in a favor. Needed someone to make sure no one noticed the blood transfusion b.s.”

“Blood transfusion? I don’t…”

“Yeah,” Claire sighs, and she sits in the chair beside Karen’s bed, leaning forward. “How much do you remember?”

Karen’s not sure what to say. How much she _can_ say. But it’s Claire, and Claire has known Matt’s secret for so long, so she decides to say it all.

“There was a warehouse. This guy Bullseye. He took Foggy, and I went to rescue him, and Bullseye threw this…” she tries to look down at her chest, tries to sit up, but Claire pushes her back gently.

“You’re okay. You’re okay. Why don’t I tell you what _I_ remember, okay? I got a call from Foggy. He said you were hurt, and that you were in an ambulance on your way to Metro General. And, of course, that he needed a favor.”

“Why?” is all Karen can ask.

“There was a woman with him. Cute. Sassy. She said that she had magical healing blood, and they needed my help to get an IV going without anyone asking what they were doing.”

“Magical healing _blood_?” Karen asks.

“That’s what I said. But she said ‘I’m Black Sky, I can do what I want,’ whatever that means, and ‘it’s complicated. Stick the damn needle in me,’ and I’ve seen enough weird shit that I just figured…whatever. And it worked.”

“Whatever,” Karen agrees with a smile. “Thank you.”

“Hey, I’m just glad to help. The criminals of New York are probably glad too. They’ve been having a rough couple of days.”

“Days?”

“You’ve been in here four days now. Which means he’s been out there for four days now.”

Understanding at last, Karen groans and brings her hands to her face.

“Frank.”

“Yep,” Claire replies, popping her ‘p’ with extra relish. “Don’t get me wrong, I’ve never felt safer walking home from work at night. But still. Looking out your window and seeing some asshole’s severed hand on the sidewalk outside your building? Not the best way to start the day.”

“Oh, God.”

“Hey, it’s not your fault that’s how he lives. Not your fault he cares about you, either. Figured that out a while back. And, look. I’d rather if he wasn’t out there killing people I’ve been spending my life stitching back together after their little barfights. But for what it’s worth, let’s just say the names I recognize in the paper after he mows them down? It usually doesn’t move me to tears, you know what I mean? Still think he’s an asshole, but he’s _your_ asshole, and I get that.”

Karen nods, exhausted now.

“I’m sorry,” she says, for no reason. “You’ll tell them I’m all right?”

“Yeah,” Claire says with a smile, grabbing her coat and bag from the end of Karen’s bed. “Anyway, I should go. I’ve been basically sneaking in and out of here to check on you. My old boss has been cool about this, but she won’t be forever, and I don’t know how to answer some of these questions. Keep your chin up. You’re gonna be fine.”

* * *

Foggy and Matt show up together. Which literally, actually, no exaggeration makes her sob like a baby. They’re both embarrassed about that, and they sit on either side of her bed and she realizes that this is all she has wanted for the past few months, and she’s getting it, and of course it’s when she’s in a hospital bed and she can’t even hug them properly.

Not that they don’t try.

When she’s done crying, and can finally thank them for somehow saving her life, Foggy looks at Matt with some of the old companionship and says, “wanna tell her the good news? Make her cry again?”

“Why don’t you do the honors,” Matt says, and Karen’s already crying again, knowing.

“Nelson Murdock is back in business! I know, I know, I’m leaving a lot of broken hearts behind at that big fancy law firm, but you know what? Expensive suits? Kind of awful. And no one _ever_ pays me in baked goods.”

“Really?” Matt asks. “Clearly we’re making the right choice then.”

“Now, we know you have another job. And frankly, your talents were wasted with us. Your talents lie in digging, pissing off criminals, and winning the terrifying hearts of pittbull-owning vigilantes, and I wouldn’t hire you back if you begged me.”

“We put you in the middle of a fight you were having, and it wasn’t fair,” Matt says. “And we’re sorry.”

“Mostly, he’s sorry.”

“Mostly I’m sorry. I made a lot of bad decisions and I…I don’t have any excuses.”

“You don’t need excuses,” Karen says. “You just need to do better.”

“I will. I can’t always promise I’ll be there. And sometimes I’ll be going through some stuff that I can’t explain. But I won’t shut you guys out anymore. I won’t try to do it all on my own. We’re a team. I should have realized that earlier.”

“You realize it now,” Foggy says. “That’s what matters.”

* * *

And it’s so perfect. It’s so warm and good, and Foggy brought her this giant teddy bear that sits next to her in the chair beside her bed, and they laughed and reminisced and made plans. And it was just like how it used to be, except it was better, because she knew now that it wasn’t going to be so easy to push them apart. All that time, all it took was for Matt to realize that his nighttime antics weren’t the only thing putting them in harm’s way. Anyone who tries to protect the innocent in a city like theirs, in a neighborhood like Hell’s Kitchen, is going to get a target on their back. Foggy and Karen would be in danger just practicing law, just writing stories, because none of the three of them are people who can sit back and let the injustices continue without an answer.

All along, all Matt had to do was let them help. Had to let them know about Elektra, about how hard he was working to balance two lives. But the only advice he was taking was from an old man who had his own interests at heart, instead of his two best friends, who care about Matt Murdock more than they care about what he can do. But now he knows. Now they all know.

It’s going to be so much better. She can feel it.

* * *

She has kind of given up on seeing Frank. When she asked Matt and Foggy if they had heard from him, Matt said, “he’s not exactly taking my calls,” and pointed to the fading bruise under one eye.

“Him and Elektra,” Foggy said when Matt left the room to get some coffee. “They were both pissed at Matt for not killing Bullseye when he had the chance. Elektra came around, but Frank…”

“Yeah.”

She remembers hearing the hate in Frank’s roar. It makes sense. Daredevil doesn’t kill. Matt doesn’t kill. She’s sure there’s a nobility in that, even if it’s a nobility that inadvertently landed her in this hospital bed. Frank wouldn’t see the nobility. He would only see perps allowed to walk. Allowed to join gangs and strap up and go into Central Park for a meeting. People given second chances don’t always use them wisely, and you always have to ask yourself: if I don’t make that call right now, who’s going to wake up in a week or a month, telephone ringing, to be told their son or daughter or loved one is in the morgue because some costumed superhero thought everyone deserves a second chance? But then again, if you killed every bad guy, if you killed guys like Turk, then you cut off all potential. People who could end up changing. End up becoming something good.

She can see both sides. Maybe that’s why Frank doesn’t want to see her. Maybe he thinks it’ll be easier on her. Maybe he’s pushing her away again. Maybe he thinks she wants to be pushed away.

Could be anything.

It takes a week and a half for him to get over it.

She’s being discharged in a few days, if everything goes well. She’s still weak and scared to cough – sometimes it feels like her insides are barely held together with duct tape.  She’s sleeping less now, now that they’re weaning her off the pain meds, and maybe that’s why she’s dozing light enough for the quietly opening door to wake her.

“Hi,” she says when he enters, and he hesitates, which tells her everything she needs to know. “I knew it. You’ve been avoiding me.”

That decides it, and Frank steps in fully and closes the door. She turns on the dim light beside her bed and it illuminates his battered face, his battered knuckles as he takes off his baseball cap.

“You look worse than me,” she says.

“Close, though,” he replies. He seems supremely uncomfortable.

“Heard you’ve been busy.”

A long pause at that, then, reluctantly, “yeah.”

“It’s okay, you know. You can sit.”

She expects him to move the giant bear from the chair, but instead he sits gingerly next to her on the edge of her bed, looming over her. Her heartbeat thuds loud in her ears, and she’s so, so glad he isn’t Matt. That he doesn’t have Matt’s talents.

He reaches out, eyes flickering to hers for permission, and she nods, her own hand coming up to move the blanket down so he can see he bandages. He lights a fire in her chest when he brushes his big fingers over her wound, so light and careful.

“It still hurt?” he asks, laying his palm flat. Judging the size of it, apparently. The skin under the gauze prickles with energy.

“Some. Can’t wait to see the scar. Think you’ve got any better ones?”

“Don’t know. I’ve got a few,” he says. He doesn’t move his hand. She’s so glad. “This one might win, though. You doing all right?”

“I’ll live, they tell me. Which is…” she arches her eyebrows, and he nods, understanding.

“Thought you were dead. No chance you survive that. He threw that thing hard enough to break the skin. Bury in your ribs. He wanted to kill you.”

“And would have, if not for Elektra’s magical blood? I guess?”

Frank’s nose wrinkles at that, his forehead creasing. That’s pretty much how she feels about it, too. Enough bullshit going on in the world without having to worry about magic blood. Then again, they’re dealing with a woman who’s back from the dead. She guesses she should be less picky.

“Should have been faster. Should have plugged him when I came around the corner and saw Red getting all Catholic on Elektra. Shoulda done a lot of things, I guess.”

“You killed him after, didn’t you? I remember that.”

“Yeah. He’s not gonna be bothering you again.”

She’s feeling, well, pretty high. But also pretty bold. So she reaches her hand up, keeping her eyes on his so she doesn’t spook him.

“Good,” she says, and she covers the hand on her wound with her own.

She and Frank, from the beginning, it’s been a lot of looking at each other and sort of figuring out what the other person is thinking. A lot of silences that mean things. Pointed looks, or not looks. A lot of that. So when she squeezes his fingers and he doesn’t pull away, and when he turns his hand over in hers so he can squeeze her fingers back, she gets it.

“Not my first rodeo,” she says slowly. “I want to tell you all about it. I want you to know why. And how. I want you to get it.”

“Okay. You don’t have to. But…okay.”

“I want to. It’s…you know when you don’t say something? And you keep it inside and it just _builds_ there? Just sort of presses up on your ribs?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I know that.”

“Yeah. That’s what it is. There’s other stuff. Stuff from back home. Stuff I haven’t told anyone before. I want to tell you.”

“You know I ain’t a priest.”

“No. I wouldn’t tell a priest. You’re the only person I know who might understand.”

Frank looks down at their hands on her chest for a moment. When he meets her gaze again, she notices for the first time how wild he looks.

“I remember you said it. Said that’s why you needed to prove it, huh? That I wasn’t all bad. Red’s always getting, you know, preachy about takin’ lives. And here you’ve taken one. More than one? Not that it matters to him. You thought…”

“If you’re not a monster, I’m not a monster. Yeah. That’s how it started.”

It hangs there, the implication: that’s not where she’s at anymore.

“Okay. Yeah. That makes sense. I’ll listen. Whatever you want to tell me. Whenever. I’ll listen. Then I’ll tell you…” a heavy sigh. “I’ll tell you what you wanted from the Colonel. Kandahar. I’ll tell you. When I’m ready.”

“Okay. Yeah.”

“Seems…” Frank starts. Pauses. Thinks. Starts over. He’s quiet and careful, and Karen feels like she’s holding her breath. “Seems like I should take my own advice.”

“About what?”

“Um, I don’t know. Holding on. Not giving up what you have. Back in the diner, I told you…you remember. I ain’t saying it again. But I thought, shit. I’m not…it’s too…” a frustrated sigh, and he takes his hand back to scrub his fingers through his hair. “Shit. I don’t know.”

“You were trying to push me away,” she tries.

“Yeah. For you, but for me too. I didn’t want to give a shit. About anything. Ever again. Just anger. Pain. That was all I was good for. That was all I wanted. But you…”

A shrug. Not quite helpless, but close, and Karen’s heart is clenched tight.

“Yeah,” she says. “I get that.”

“Yeah?”

“It was too much.”

“For both of us. Still is, for me, I guess. I wake up sometimes and it’s like…I’m not even me anymore. And usually that’s okay. That’s not a bad thing, right? Wasn’t much of me left. Only peace for me was fighting. But you come and make me say shit like, “I don’t like pizza,” and that’s…that’s me.”

“Yeah, and it’s a dealbreaker,” she says teasingly. “We live in New York! Come on.”

“It tastes like greasy cardboard,” he says, but he’s smiling a little too.

“That would be like me saying I’m a cat person.”

“Forget everything I just said. You’re on your own,” he says softly, and she laughs. And he reaches down again to play with her bandage, his other hand on her blanket, on her right side, propping him up like a tent above her, like a protective shelter.

“I know what you’re saying,” she says, to prompt him to say more. “Frank Castle. The Punisher. We did all this before. It’s fine. I’m still here, remember?”

“I’m always gonna be seeing their faces. I’m not…I’m never gonna be, I don’t know. Better than this. I’ve known it since that doctor said as much on the stand. Killing, making people pay…that’s temporary. It’s always going to be hard.” She nods, remembering their conversation in the prison, remembering how concerned he was after what the doctor said, remembering _what if this is just me now_. He had been changed permanently, yes. But Karen has to keep hoping he can be changed again. Has to hope that he can find _real_ peace one day. She wants that for him more than anything. She has cared about him since before she met him, cared about the man he used to be and the man he became because of senseless violence and tragedy. Even when her caring was mostly selfish, mostly about proving her own worth to herself, she still wanted him to be _okay_. For the demons in his head to quiet. She wants that for him now more than ever. Frank pauses a while, collects his thoughts, continues, “And Red, maybe, might have a point. Well, not _really_ him, but I hear him in my head sometimes when I look at you, and I start to feel some kinda softness for you or…something. And I hear Red talking about what I deserve, which is nothin’ good. And what you deserve, which is the opposite, and he talks about what my family deserves, which is to be remembered. And I was…I’ve never been good at much. But I’m good at what I do now, and I’m good at surviving, even when there’s nothing to survive for. What killed them shoulda put me in the ground. Shoulda killed me too. Put that bullet in my brain and end it, because without them, what the fuck am I here for? I mean you- you survive all that shit just to come home and be a family again. It was for them. All that shit I did overseas, I could look in the mirror and say ‘this is all for them. All for a good reason’. My baby girl. My boy. My wife. This is gonna help us all have a better life. I mean how- how is a man supposed to keep going after that? He doesn’t. Or he does, but he’s different. I’m different. I’m not that man anymore, right? Ain’t gonna braid anyone’s hair or make pancakes with smiley faces in ‘em or stand in line at Toys R Us at fucking three in the morning to get a dumb toy all the parents are fightin’ over. That’s done. That’s him. But I need to remember. I can’t stop remembering the bad stuff, the holes and her ruined face and their screams and those seconds when I didn’t move. When I didn’t help them the way I was supposed to. And doing what I do is easy when that’s all I remember, but…maybe I don’t want it to be easy. And you’re the one who brought them back. Made them whole again. Even just…even just talking to me like you did that first time, remember? Like I was a person.”

“You _are_ a person,” Karen reminds him with a sad smile. And out of the blue, he moves his hand up to touch her lips. Just a little. Just a slight brush, like he’s mapping the feel of it with fingers that have probably, some time in the past few hours, ended someone’s life.

“Yeah,” he says, letting his hand drop back down to her chest. “I’m a person. And I was out on the streets tonight, right? Watching some gang safehouse, looking for this one asshole who’d been distributing kiddie porn. And Elektra comes up, like this is a normal thing people do, and she’s asking me how you been. Just sat next to me on a stakeout, twirling around her fucking kebob sticks like she ain’t some, I don’t know, undead ninja princess. And she asks me how you been, but I could tell she knew. My old lady used to do that, you know, _oh, how was the bank today, Frank_. Knowing I ain’t been to the bank like I was supposed to, yeah. So Elektra pulls that, and I gotta tell her that I been out killin’ instead of going to see you. And she’s laughing at me, calling me all kinds of names. And I don’t want to explain the whole thing to this woman, right? I don’t know this woman. I know she’s like a zombie and she’s got it bad for Red for some reason, so that’s two strikes right there, and the third is probably that she left scars in me last time we met. But she won’t leave me alone, and I’m not gonna fight her for that, so I get to talking. Just enough so she’ll get it. And she does, ‘cus she starts talking too, letting me know all the shit I don’t need to know about she and Red. And how sometimes she thinks she don’t deserve him, but mostly she doesn’t care. And I’m like, how can you not care? How can you look at someone and think, ‘this person’s a goddamn light in this shitty world, and I want them, even if I risk breaking them like I break everything else in my life’. And she tells me she thinks about what Red deserves, and she thinks about it hard. And she decides that Red deserves what Red _wants_. Deserves to make his own choices. Deserves someone who gives a shit about him the way she does. And so if Red wants her, sees something in her worth fighting for, she’s gonna let him have it. And at first, I thought…well. Don’t matter what I thought at first. You do a lot of thinking when you got all that time to yourself out there, you know? So I thought, what the hell? I’ll come here and talk ‘til she shuts me up, and I’ll let her know exactly what I’m thinkin’. Because I look at you sometimes and I think…well, I think you’re making a big mistake, looking at me the way you do. But if I don’t say nothing, then I’m just being that idiot I told you you were being in the diner. Having something and letting it go. Wasting time when I know better’n anybody how much that stings when your time is over. It’s a mistake. But it’s your mistake to make. So if you want to tell me to shut up and stay away, or anything you want. Can’t give you much. But, uh. I’ll give you what I can.”

And Karen, at first, thinks something’s seriously wrong with her heart, or her lungs, or something, because she can hardly breathe. Then she realizes that it’s just _relief_. Relief that she’s not losing it, that there’s been something there this whole time, that he’s telling her, letting her decide for herself now that she has all this information. She pushes herself into a seated position, Frank looking alarmed and hovering halfway between letting her do it and pushing her back down. But she does it anyway, sits up fully, and brings up both hands to cradle his stupid, bruised face.

“Shut up, Frank,” she says, and then she does the dumb thing that she’s been dying to do for weeks now, and she kisses him.


	13. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Six months later...

“I still can’t believe this is like…a thing,” Foggy whispers. Karen rolls her eyes and puts the salad on the table along with the spaghetti and meatballs she already served, plated and ready for the others to arrive. She decides not to tell him that Frank’s the one who made the spaghetti sauce. That might actually kill him.

“You don’t have to whisper. He’s not Matt. And my place isn’t _that_ small,” she says. Foggy blushes.

“Better than my place now that I’ve un-sold out,” he laments. “Guess it’s true. Crime really does pay.”

“Okay, _first_ of all? He’s not a criminal, he’s a vigilante,” Karen hisses, ignoring her earlier advice and keeping her voice pitched low. “Secondly, this is _my_ apartment I bought with _my_ money from _my_ job. He just crashes here sometimes. Most of the time. So shush!”

“Well then I guess it’s true what they say,” Foggy hisses back. “The crime beat at the Bulletin really does pay.”

Karen laughs abruptly and throws a roll at him like she’s twelve.

Before Foggy can retaliate with a cherry tomato, Elektra walks in. Just opens the door and comes in like she owns the place. Which, actually, she kind of does – a few months ago, when Karen needed a new place, she kind of bought the building. Because she’s a resurrected, wealthy entrepreneur who doesn’t give a single fuck, and Karen loves her.

“You have to knock,” Matt points out dryly, but with no real conviction. Max trots over and accepts his customary pats on the head from both newcomers.

“Hope everyone’s ready for the world’s weirdest dinner party,” Foggy says as he greets them. He hugs Matt in the way he always does – like they haven’t seen each other in months even though they were just in court together hours ago. He kind of awkwardly half-hugs Elektra, both of them looking anywhere but at each other. And it’s really funny to Karen, because these should not be people who hang out with each other around a table and eat, and yet here she is, making them do that.

“It doesn’t have to be weird,” Elektra says primly, kissing Karen on both cheeks. “You’re looking lovely as always.”

“Thanks,” Karen says. “You too. I love your dress!”

“Of course it has to be weird!” Foggy protests. “It’s three totally morally opposed vigilantes eating dinner together.”

“Well, obviously it’s weird if you talk about work at a personal dinner, Franklin,” Elektra says, primarily because she knows it annoys him when she calls him _Franklin_. “Besides, you forgot the Lawyer and the Journalist. All five of us, and you have the makings of a really terrible joke.”

Karen’s relieved when Foggy raises his glass to toast to that, and she’s relieved when Matt and Elektra take their seats.

Now they’re only missing Frank. Who was, admittedly, the element she was always most worried about introducing. Six months is a long time to keep your love life and your friends so separate, especially when your love life and friends are so professionally opposed. But they’ve got to start somewhere. And who doesn’t like spaghetti and meatballs?

Probably Elektra, now that she thinks about it.

“Hey,” says Frank, poking his head briefly out of her bedroom. “Uh, can I get some help in here, Karen?”

“Yeah, sure,” she says, pushing back from the table with a quizzical look that he doesn’t answer as he ducks back into the room.

“You got him to stop calling you ‘ma’am’, huh?” Foggy asks as she goes.

“Oh, he still calls her _ma’am_ sometimes,” Matt says with exaggerated disgust. Elektra laughs loudly, a delighted cackle. “The benefits of super hearing and an extremely misguided impulse to check in on your friends.”

Karen’s giggling as she walks into the bedroom, but the giggle dies down when she sees Frank is shirtless in the master bathroom, sitting on the closed lid of the toilet and looking a little sheepish as he holds out a needle and thread.

“Popped the stitches,” he explains.

Once, she never would have been able to do this. But six months is a long time, and now her hands don’t even shake as she takes the offered instruments and moves to stand behind him.

Patching him up is one of the things she likes best, even as she hates that it needs to be done at all. Getting to run her hands along his wounds, healing them with her fingers and her care, it helps.

One day, it might not be that simple. One day he might not even be able to make it home for her to try. But it hasn’t happened yet, and if being with Frank Castle, knowing Frank Castle, has taught her anything, it’s that regret is reserved for the time you don’t have. And wouldn’t she rather have this time? Rather than waking up one morning to news about the Punisher’s death, wishing she had spent any time at all?

He still says it, still says _one batch two batch penny and dime_ before he pulls the trigger and ends lives, and she still writes articles about taking the law into your own hands, but then most nights he’ll crawl into bed beside her smelling of gunpowder and blood, and she’ll curl up into him, press her face into his skin and breathe him in. Some nights he stumbles into the bathroom and she gets up, grabs her overstocked first aid kit, goes to help him. Some nights she gets calls from Matt, Elektra, Claire, Jessica, Luke. Hears them say, “first of all, he’s going to be okay, but…”. Some nights there’s nothing, and then he’ll shoot her a text when he can.

Six months is a long time, in some ways. And Karen has always been good at adjusting. And she’s learned to take it as it comes.

“There,” she says, smoothing the bandage over her neat stitches. “Don’t pop them again, Frank.”

She leans over his back, rests her chin on his shoulder, wraps her arms around him and kisses one of his scars. He has so many, and she tries to give them all equal attention at some point or another.

“Try not to,” he says, turning his head to kiss her temple, one of his arms reaching back to brush his bruised knuckles against the side of her face. She looks at them in the mirror, smiling at his reflection and her own. Night and day, if you didn’t know them any better.

“You ready for this?” she asks.

“I gotta choice?” but he’s kidding, so she nips at his shoulder again, and he laughs, ducking his head, scrubbing his free hand through his hair.

“You had plenty of time to veto,” she says. “Now put on a shirt. No need to make the rest of them jealous.”

He huffs another laugh as she untangles herself reluctantly and tosses him his shirt from the hamper.

“Hey, c’mere a second,” he says, catching her by the hand and pulling her in.

“Matt can hear you,” she reminds him before he says anything too dirty. He has that mischievous look to him that he gets sometimes. More, lately, as he gets used to this.

“Well, let him hear it. Just wanted to say, uh…I love you.”

He does this thing he sometimes does with his face. She always finds it ridiculously endearing. This sort of anticipatory smile, waiting for a laugh but expecting her to smack him around for it or something. She lets him pull her closer and looks at him for a long while. Lets the moment hang there.

“Thought we weren’t gonna do that,” she says, and he looks downright sheepish now.

“Yeah, but…been thinking it for a while. Figured if I’m gonna be thinking it every time I talk to you, every time I look at you, I might as well get it out. You know I’d…I’d do anythin’ for you. And I wanted you to know it. Just…One Batch, Two Batch, you know?”

“I know,” she says: sometimes he says it like that. Like someone else might say _carpe diem_ or _yolo_ or _no time like the present_. Reminding himself that waiting isn’t always the answer. That you won’t always have tomorrow.

“And I mean, I know what we said. You know, that we weren’t gonna say those things, or…” He looks away, embarrassed, and Christ, but she still gets that cotton candy punch of unexpected tenderness when she looks at him.

“I love you too,” she says, ducking her head so her eyeline will meet his where he’s still seated on the toilet. “I’ve been thinking it for a while too.”

He smirks at her, and she kisses the corner of his mouth that pulls up, and she plays with the growing curls at the back of his neck the way she likes to do.

“Yeah?” he asks.

“Yeah,” she says. “Now stop it. We’re gonna make Matt puke.”

“Yeah!” comes the sudden shout from the kitchen. “You are! Stop being gross!”

Karen kisses him once more for good measure before heading for the door. On her way out of the bedroom, she brushes her fingers over the framed picture of his family. It moved in with his dog after a few months. The first time Claire saw it, her eyebrows nearly climbed to her skull, but Karen doesn’t think that it’s that weird. After all, they’re what brought she and Frank together. And they deserve to be remembered. She’s a part of them now, though in a perfect word she wouldn’t even know their names.

_Don’t worry_ , she tells them, like she does every time. _He’s okay. I’ve got him. He’s okay._

And after all they’ve been through, and considering all the places they could be, she thinks this is a pretty great place for her to end up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So that's the end! Thank you so much to everyone who read and took the time to comment! This has been a lot of fun!


End file.
